OFWs around the world will soon be mandated by law to get SSS Coverage after Executive Secretrary Salvador Medialdea confirmed that President Rodrigo Duterte recently signed the bill that was proposed to repeal the Social Security Law.
The law, which will soon be implemented within the year, will give the Social Security System’s charter an overhaul as a means to ensure that funds paid for by the citizens will be appropriated properly for long-term usage.
For OFWs, the new law will include mandatory SSS coverage for those under 60 years of age and also includes the expansion of powers of the SSS Commission to determine the monthly contribution of the members, as well as their salary credit. This added measure will soon enable SSS to increase contributions as per the report from GMA News.
SSS members who will get terminated from their jobs will also get unemployment insurance.
“The bill envisions a benefits-based system—what you invest is what you get; no investment, no benefit—through which the SSS contributions could be raised without seeking the approval of the President or the endorsement of Congress because the discretion to increase contributions could be left to the better judgment of the SSS board of directors provided it would generate more suitable pensions,” said Senator Richard Gordon, sponsor of the Senate version of the bill, said in October last year in an interview with GMA News.
In addition, the SSS Commission will also be empowered to increase benefits, condone penalties, rationalize investments and invest its Reserve Funds in its aim to grow the wealth of the state pension fund.
Is it approved?