Seeking comments on the Draft Law on Social Insurance (amended)

(Baonghean.vn) -On the afternoon of May 13, the National Assembly Delegation of Nghe An province and the provincial Social Insurance Agency held a conference to collect comments on the Draft Law on Social Insurance (amended) and amend and supplement a number of articles of the Law on Health Insurance. The conference was attended by Mr. Phan Trung Ly - Member of the National Assembly Standing Committee, Chairman of the National Assembly Law Committee. Mr. Pham Van Tan - Provincial Party Committee Member, Head of the National Assembly Delegation chaired.

Mr. Phan Trung Ly - Chairman of the National Assembly's Committee on Law spoke at the conference.

At the meeting, the representative of the provincial Social Insurance reported on the current situation of social insurance collection and payment. Accordingly, the province has only about 2,830/6,038 enterprises participating in social insurance; there are about 185,000/252,000 employees who are required to participate in social insurance. Many enterprises sign labor contracts with minimum wages or sign 2 contracts and take a lower contract to register with the social insurance agency, creating inequality among enterprises and causing loss of social insurance fund. The situation of outstanding debts is increasing, until April 2014, the total debt of social insurance, unemployment insurance, and health insurance is over 288 billion VND. Many enterprises owe social insurance for a long time with large amounts of money, affecting the rights of workers. The social insurance agency has actively coordinated with relevant agencies to carry out inspection work, although achieving some results, in general there are still many limitations.

The provincial Social Insurance proposed to amend and supplement the Draft Law on Social Insurance on the function of specialized inspection and authority to handle violations of the Social Insurance law; on the cost of apparatus management; on expanding the subjects participating in compulsory and voluntary Social Insurance; amending the retirement age and the salary level of Social Insurance contribution towards balancing the pension and death benefit funds; and supplementing benefits for Social Insurance participants. In addition, it suggested amending a number of contents in the Draft Law on Health Insurance such as developing and expanding the subjects participating; the scope of benefits entitled to Health Insurance; on management, allocation and use of the Health Insurance fund...

Mr. Tran Quoc Chung - Deputy of the Economic and Budget Committee of the Provincial People's Council participated in giving comments.

Many delegates frankly gave their opinions on the draft Law on Social Insurance, paying special attention to the issue of amending the retirement age and the implementation roadmap. The delegates said that raising the issue of amending the retirement age was unreasonable in the law-making process because the new Labor Law passed by the National Assembly clearly stipulates the retirement age; affirming that raising the retirement age will create opposing opinions from workers. In addition, with quite specific evidence, the delegates also said that in order to avoid the Social Insurance Fund going bankrupt as predicted, it is necessary to implement other necessary measures such as implementing measures to collect the right amount of money, preventing the situation of social insurance arrears... Chairman of the National Assembly's Law Committee, Mr. Phan Trung Ly suggested: The draft Law on Social Insurance should not raise the issue of regulating the retirement age because it has been stipulated in the Labor Law, instead, it should be considered to specify in detail the contribution level and the period of enjoying the social insurance regime. Agree with the consideration of assigning specialized inspection functions and assigning inspection tasks to professional staff of social insurance agencies...

Concluding the conference, Head of the National Assembly delegation, Mr. Pham Van Tan affirmed that amending the Social Insurance Law is extremely necessary. The Provincial National Assembly delegation agreed with the proposal to add a specialized inspection function for the Social Insurance agency; on the cost of managing the apparatus. Consider the proposals of the remaining groups of proposals that the Provincial Social Insurance agency raised at the conference.

Nhat Lan