Strengthening the collection and reduction of debts of Social Insurance, Health Insurance, Unemployment Insurance to ensure benefits for employees

Along with focusing on increasing the number of participants in Social Insurance and Health Insurance, Nghe An Provincial Social Insurance has implemented many synchronous solutions to enhance collection and reduce the rate of outstanding debts of Social Insurance, Health Insurance, Unemployment Insurance, and Occupational Accident Insurance - Occupational Diseases (abbreviated as Social Insurance).

Efforts in collecting Social Insurance

In the first 9 months of 2022, the Covid-19 epidemic still has many complicated developments affecting the psychology, income and operations of employers, so the work of directly disseminating the law on Social Insurance,Health insuranceat enterprises face many difficulties. The awareness of many employers is still limited, they have not strictly complied, even deliberately delayed payment, evaded payment of social insurance, affecting the legitimate rights of employees and causing difficulties in collecting social insurance. However, with the coordination of sectors and levels; the efforts of officers and employees of Nghe An Provincial Social Insurance, by the end of September 2022, the total social insurance revenue of the whole province reached nearly 5,500 billion VND, reaching 70.17% compared to the collection plan assigned by Vietnam Social Security; an increase of 298.6 billion VND (up 5.44%) over the same period in 2021.

Representatives of the provincial Social Insurance work with businesses in the province on the issue of outstanding social insurance and health insurance debts. Photo: Dinh Tuyen

Mr. Hoang Quang Phuc - Head of Collection Management Department, Provincial Social Insurance said: To achieve the above results, during the past time, Nghe An Provincial Social Insurance has always closely directed, guided and urged the Social Insurance of districts and towns to implement collection urging solutions according to the direction of Vietnam Social Insurance, and at the same time encouraged units to flexibly implement collection urging solutions suitable to the practical situation in the locality.

Specifically: Right from the beginning of the year, the Provincial Social Insurance has developed a collection plan, assigned collection targets to the Social Insurance of districts and towns; at the same time, proactively reported to the Provincial People's Committee and coordinated with relevant sectors and levels to organize implementation.

In addition, the Provincial Social Insurance has assigned targets for collecting Social Insurance, Health Insurance, Unemployment Insurance and debt ratio to each specialized officer, linking the quarterly classification of civil servants with the performance results at the assigned unit; Monthly organizing work with units that have owed Social Insurance contributions for 3 months or more, to listen to the units' sharing about the difficulties and problems in the process of implementing Social Insurance, Health Insurance, Unemployment Insurance policies for employees to have timely support, remove difficulties with the unit; at the same time, urging units to pay Social Insurance fully and promptly, ensuring the rights of employees...

Provincial Social Insurance officers guide and propagate people to participate in social insurance, health insurance, and voluntary social insurance. Photo: Dinh Tuyen

In particular, for units that owe for 3 months or more, have committed to pay Social Insurance but do not fulfill or do not fulfill their commitments, and units that do not cooperate in the debt collection process, the Director of the Provincial Social Insurance issues a Decision on sudden specialized inspection. As of September 30, 2022, there were sudden specialized inspections at 143 units, the amount collected after the inspection was 10.5 billion VND, accounting for 29.22% of the debt at the time of the inspection decision.

Despite efforts to synchronously deploy many solutions to strengthen debt collection and reductionSocial insurance, but the debt ratio of Social Insurance in the province is still high, accounting for 5.63% of the amount receivable from Vietnam Social Insurance. Of which, the debt of the business sector has the largest proportion, with a debt of 376,145 million VND, accounting for 85.33% of the total debt. At the working sessions, many businesses said that the reason for the long-standing debt is that after a long period of being affected by the Covid-19 epidemic, the units have initially restored production and business activities, however, the recovery rate is still slow, so they are not yet able to pay the debts.

People do procedures at the one-stop department of Nghe An Social Insurance. Photo: Dinh Tuyen

In addition, according to Mr. Hoang Quang Phuc, the reason for the outstanding social insurance debts at many enterprises is that the units have not really paid attention to implementing policies on social insurance, health insurance, unemployment insurance for employees; Handling the outstanding social insurance debts at units and enterprises that have stopped operating, dissolved, gone bankrupt or the employer has absconded or disappeared is extremely difficult. The solution of organizing trade unions to sue the employer in court is difficult to implement due to procedural problems; the most drastic measure is to handle criminal cases against violating organizations and individuals, and no employer has been prosecuted or handled because the viewpoint on the act of "evading social insurance payment" has not been highly unified among the prosecution agencies.

Promote solutions to strengthen collection and debt reduction

The situation of unpaid or late payment of social insurance at units not only causes difficulties in implementing social security policies but also directly affects the legitimate rights and interests of employees, negatively affecting the reputation and development of the unit.

Mr. Le Viet Thuc - Deputy Director of the Provincial Social Insurance said: To ensure the rights of employees, support units, especially enterprises to properly fulfill their obligations to pay Social Insurance, Nghe An Provincial Social Insurance continues to implement appropriate solutions and has a document requesting the Provincial People's Committee to direct functional branches to strengthen State management of the activities of labor-using units in the area: Review and revoke business licenses for inactive units; Implement bankruptcy and dissolution of enterprises with prolonged losses or ceasing operations; Direct the Police, Court, Enforcement agencies... to strictly handle units that intentionally evade paying Social Insurance, Health Insurance for employees, and misappropriate employees' contributions. It is recommended that sectors (especially the Police, Courts, and Procuracies) coordinate with the Social Insurance agency to focus on disseminating laws on Social Insurance, sanctions, and forms of handling administrative violations and crimes in the field of Social Insurance to raise awareness among employers and employees.

Youth Union members of the provincial Social Insurance and the provincial Post Office disseminate social insurance and health insurance policies to the people. Photo: Thanh Chung

At the same time, continue to request the State Bank to closely coordinate in providing information on available balances of units sanctioned for administrative violations to the provincial Social Insurance agency so that the enforcement of administrative violations is effective.

Debts on social insurance and health insurance payments and the consequences of social insurance debt for employees. Photo: Nghe An Social Insurance

It is necessary to strengthen appropriate solutions to ensure the strictness of the law and protect the legitimate rights and interests of employees. At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen communication work to raise awareness and respect for the law among employers. Each employee himself/herself also needs to promote the role of supervising the social insurance payment obligations of employers, contributing to limiting the situation of evasion and late payment of social insurance by units and enterprises./.