Nghe An: More than 3,100 businesses owe social insurance

(Baonghean) - In the past two years, the debt of social insurance, health insurance, and unemployment insurance in Nghe An province has tended to increase. This requires strong sanctions to raise the responsibility and awareness of units and businesses.

» Top 10 businesses with the largest insurance debt in Nghe An

» Nghe An owes over 169 billion VND in insurance arrears

Difficulty in handling overdue debt

Van Son Construction Joint Stock Company has just been fined by Nghe An Social Insurance Agency with the highest fine for private units of 37,500,000 VND due to late payment of social insurance, unemployment insurance, and health insurance up to the end of August 2017 with a debt of nearly 82,000,000 VND. In addition, during the process of paying social insurance, the unit did not pay enough people as prescribed, which is 2 people, and did not pay at the correct level as prescribed.

This is not the only case that the provincial Social Insurance agency has fined for social insurance arrears. In October and November, the provincial Social Insurance inspection team conducted surprise specialized inspections on social insurance, unemployment insurance, and health insurance payments at 28 units in the province. Thereby, 8 units were fined for administrative violations in the field of labor and social insurance with a total fine of nearly 260 million VND.

Previously, the inspection team of the Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs also inspected the debt of social insurance, health insurance, and unemployment insurance at 104 units and made records of 50 units; and sanctioned 17 units for not complying with the conclusion of the Administrative Violation Record of the Chief Inspector of the Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs.

Nghe An Social Insurance Inspectorate inspects insurance implementation at enterprises. Photo: My Ha

The increasing number of units being penalized shows that the situation of social insurance, unemployment insurance, and health insurance arrears in the province is on the rise and the number of units falling into bad debt is increasing. Specifically, by the end of October 2017, the whole province had 3,148 units owing social insurance, unemployment insurance, and health insurance with more than 225.2 billion VND, an increase of more than 154.6 billion VND compared to the end of 2016.

Among these, through the review of the Social Insurance Agency, there are 173 units that, although owing insurance with the amount of tens of billions of VND, the business owners are "slow", "absent", "missing" or stopping operations.

For example, Hong Phuc Joint Stock Company (Phan Dang Luu Street - Vinh City); Tan Linh Private Enterprise (Vinh Tan Ward - Vinh City); Linh Son Pharmaceutical Joint Stock Company (140 - Phan Dinh Phung - Vinh City); Cua Lo Petroleum Urban Investment Joint Stock Company (134 - Nguyen Van Cu)...

According to Mr. Ngo Xuan Dung - Deputy Head of Debt Collection and Exploitation Department - Social Insurance, currently, the units that owe social insurance, health insurance, and unemployment insurance are mainly concentrated in basic construction business units, due to difficulties in payment capital and slow payment schedule from projects invested by the state.

For commercial goods suppliers, the main reason for insurance debt is that they have not yet recovered the debt from the projects; completed projects have not been allocated capital and the disbursement progress is slow.

In addition, some units owe insurance due to lack of understanding of policies and regulations, misconception that social insurance is commercial insurance or many units deliberately delay, do not cooperate, and employers do not care about social insurance policies.

The worrying thing is that the larger the social insurance debt of the enterprise, the more it affects the rights of employees and the social security policy of the state. When the enterprise owes social insurance, employees who are sick, pregnant, unemployed are not resolved, are not allowed to get their books when they retire, are not allowed to change jobs, are not allowed to close their social insurance books to transfer...

Even though many businesses are evading social insurance payments and owing social insurance, they still regularly deduct workers' salaries every month, seriously violating the legitimate rights and interests of workers.

Increase sanctions for violations

To limit the situation of insurance debt, in recent years, the provincial Social Insurance agency has had many solutions. In particular, focusing on contents such as assigning specialized collection officers to regularly follow up with units to urge collection, establishing debt collection teams, establishing specialized inspection teams, interdisciplinary inspection teams to work with debt units, and sanctioning administrative violations in the field of social insurance.

The industry has also coordinated with tax authorities to provide information to review the situation of labor use, salary fund, social insurance debt, on that basis, to plan for coordination in inspection and examination of tax-debt and social insurance-debt units; coordinated with banks to collect social insurance and health insurance debt through the accounts of units opened at banks.

In particular, the provincial Social Insurance agency has also coordinated with trade unions at all levels to compile records of debt units to propose lawsuits to the court, and coordinated with the police to transfer records of units and individuals with signs of law violations for investigation and handling.

With drastic solutions, by November 2017, the debt collection team had directly worked with 56 units; thereby, collecting 6.5/82 billion VND of debt. The Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs also coordinated with the Social Insurance agency to invite 104 units to work; thereby, 13 units have paid off the debt with an amount of more than 11 billion VND (accounting for about 1/3 of the total debt).

However, in reality, the work of collecting social insurance debts still faces many difficulties and shortcomings. Mr. Tran Van Phuong, Head of the Inspection and Examination Department, Provincial Social Insurance, said: “The insurance inspection team does not always work smoothly. In fact, many business owners do not cooperate for reasons such as the director is absent, the director is a foreigner and is not present in Vietnam, or the business refuses to work. Even when administrative penalty records have been drawn up, many units still deliberately do not comply, forcing them to implement the solution of enforcing the penalty decision.”

The most “strong” solution currently is to file a lawsuit in court, but it has not been effective. Currently, out of 58 units that the Social Insurance Agency has filed a case with to request the Labor Federation to file a lawsuit, only 1 unit, VENTURE Joint Stock Company (Thanh Chuong), has agreed to mediate and some units have resolved their debts but only for a very small amount.

Besides, "calling" on grassroots unions to file lawsuits is difficult to do because currently many small and medium enterprises do not have trade unions and most of the unions are under the control of enterprises.

These shortcomings have recently been discussed by National Assembly delegates. Many opinions suggest that in order to increase the “deterrence” factor, the Ministry of Public Security should direct the police at all levels to grasp the situation, coordinate with trade unions to detect, investigate and propose prosecution of some typical cases of evasion of social insurance, health insurance and unemployment insurance for employees.

Agreeing with this view, Mr. Tran Van Phuong - Head of Inspection and Examination Department, Social Insurance of Nghe An province affirmed: “Article 216 of the Penal Code has clearly stipulated the Crime of evading payment of social insurance, health insurance, and unemployment insurance for employees and the collection of records of units with outstanding insurance debts is very clear. For that reason, prosecuting violating units is necessary to increase the responsibility and awareness of units and to legitimately protect the rights and legitimate interests of the collective of workers”./.

My Ha