Help workers protect their rights

(Baonghean) - The "double" benefit is the most obvious thing when the policy of giving social insurance books to employees is implemented. Thereby, it helps employers save human resources and management costs and allows employees to grasp their participation process to protect their own rights, minimize the situation of debt payment, evasion of social insurance payment...

“My husband used to pay insurance at a company. After leaving his job, we continued to pay voluntary insurance at the local level. Now, when he has a new job, the family wants to transfer the insurance book to the company, however, when we contacted the person in charge of insurance at the commune, we were told that the book has not been submitted yet. We do not know what to do now. Can you help us look up my husband's insurance book?”

This is one of the familiar contents that the staff in charge of the Q&A section of Nghe An Social Insurance regularly receive from employees. In which, the majority want to find out information about their social insurance payment process.

In January 2017 alone, in less than 2 weeks, there were 10 cases asking for "help" from the insurance agency because in addition to having their monthly salary deducted to pay insurance, they also did not know the details of their payment process, whether they were covered by insurance or not.

In Nghe An province, there are currently more than 400 enterprises with long-term insurance debts totaling more than 148 billion VND, and thousands of workers are implicated, many of whom are of retirement age but still cannot close their insurance books.

However, what is more ironic is that many of these people still have their salaries deducted by their companies every month to pay for insurance. But in reality, the companies use that money for other purposes, causing disadvantages to the workers.

In previous years, according to the provisions of the Social Insurance Law 2006, employers were responsible for preserving the social insurance books of employees during the time the employees worked at the unit and returning the books when they no longer worked.

However, the implementation of this regulation still has some shortcomings such as: Employees do not have information about the social insurance payment process; employers still deduct social insurance payments from employees every month but do not submit them to the social insurance agency but instead appropriate the social insurance payment for other purposes; separate social insurance books are lost, and even employers do not return the books to employees when they need to transfer to a new workplace...

Workers work at MLB Tenegry Export Garment Company (Yen Thanh).

Faced with this reality, the amended Law on Insurance, effective from January 1, 2016, has adjusted and proposed a plan to hand over social insurance books to employees. In particular, it stipulates: Employees have the right to be granted and manage social insurance books and are responsible for preserving social insurance books.

On the part of social insurance agencies, to implement this regulation in the spirit of the 2014 Social Insurance Law, ensuring the handover of correct and sufficient social insurance books for employees to self-manage, social insurance agencies must complete social insurance books, and at the same time fully update data of participants and the payment process into the social insurance industry database for management.

In early January 2017, Garment 10 Corporation was the first unit in the country to organize the handover of social insurance books for employees to self-manage.

According to the plan of Vietnam Social Security, in 2017, Vietnam Social Security strives to hand over 60% of the total number of social security books to employees, and this work will be completed before December 31, 2018.

Mr. Nguyen Ba Cuong - Head of the Social Insurance Card Issuance Department - Nghe An Social Insurance said: "Social insurance books are the essential assets of employees. Therefore, the policy of giving the books to employees to manage is reasonable, practical and in line with the wishes of the majority of employees".

Illustration photo.

However, to make the process go smoothly, there are still some difficulties and inadequacies. According to statistics, Nghe An province currently has more than 230,000 social insurance books for employees. However, of these, more than 100,000 books are old books (green cover without leaflets), issued before 2008.

Therefore, before handing over the social insurance book to the employee, Nghe An Social Insurance is forced to reissue a new book. In addition, the management software is currently faulty and does not meet the requirements of continuous connectivity; there are still many problems in reviewing and standardizing information of social insurance participants...

At this time, Nghe An and Ha Tinh are also the first two localities to use the new social insurance software. Therefore, currently, it is not possible to centralize data for Vietnam Social Security to manage before handing over books to employees because Vietnam Social Security does not have a method to do so.

To ensure the rights of workers in a timely manner, Nghe An Social Insurance has proposed many solutions. In the immediate future, it will proactively print the insurance payment process of workers on the province's data in advance so that units and workers can review and adjust if there are any errors.

In 2017, the provincial Social Insurance sector will focus human resources to speed up the implementation process according to the book review and handover process to employees; launch a competition movement to hand over books with correct content, ensuring specific progress for each unit during implementation.

The industry will also strengthen propaganda on the media so that workers can see the humane meaning of handing over social insurance books to employees. From there, it will strengthen administrative reform, improve management capacity and implement policies.

My Ha