Social Security Fund starts new insurance scheme
The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) on Monday launched an initiative to provide health insurance to the nation’s workforce, a plan that the country’s largest employers’ associations said was premature. NSSF director Ouk Samvithya said that by the middle of this year, enterprises in the country with more than seven employees will be required to pay into the fund to support the health care initiative. The NSSF counts more than 880,000 employees at 6,107 firms as members. Mr. Samvithya said he hopes 900,000 will be part of the health care scheme. “We have been processing workers’ compensation claims for five years in 24 provinces and Phnom Penh, and now we are moving to stage two: health insurance,” Mr. Samvithya said in a speech at NSSF headquarters in Tuol Kok district. Phase two of the NSSF’s plan to raise social welfare standards through compulsory health insurance would hypothetically see staff covered by the fund, without limit, for all ailments that prevent them from carrying out their duties at work. The cost of insurance would be shared evenly between companies and workers. … In phase one of the social security plan, the NSSF dictated that employers pay 1.7 percent of workers’ salary in return for full coverage, effectively taking on all responsibility in the event of injury at work. This figure was later revised down to 0.8 percent after lobbying from GMAC and the Cambodian Federation of Employees and Business Associations (CAMFEBA) in 2008. The NSSF’s workers’ compensation plan pays out between 5 and 6 million riel, or about $1,250 to $1,500, in the event that an individual’s working capacity is reduced by 20 percent or more, and guarantees lifelong support should a member become completely incapacitated. But according to Dave Welsh, country director of the Solidarity Center, a U.S.-based labor rights group, actually getting NSSF to compensate injured workers is a struggle. When a section of the Taiwanese-owned Wing Star shoe factory in Kompong Speu province collapsed in May, killing two workers and hospitalizing nine, the NSSF was less than accommodating to its members, he said. …
Aun Pheap and Matt Blomberg
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/social-security-fund-starts-new-insurance-scheme-55375/
