Close to
100,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) became Social Security System (SSS)
members in 2013, with their contributions reaching P3.1 billion, a 22-percent
year-on-year growth.
SSS data
showed that some 923,000 remitted contributions last year as a result of the
agency's sustained campaign to attract migrant workers.
“To better
serve our expanding OFW membership, we deployed more roving officers to assist
SSS foreign representatives in the Middle East, Europe and Asia, and we reached
out to Filipino communities in 14 major locations overseas," said Judy
Frances See, SSS senior vice president for account management and concurrent
head of international operations.
Among the
duties of SSS foreign representatives are to highlight the value of SSS coverage,
promote reactivation of SSS membership, and set up foreign representative
offices (FROs) in countries with high OFW populations.
Last year,
two new FROs—in Macau and Bahrain—were set up.
Also last
year, the SSS initiated exploratory talks on proposed bilateral social security
agreements (SSA) with China and the USA, and pursued its SSA negotiations with
Germany, Japan and South Korea.
“OFWs
often fall outside of social protection schemes in their place of employment, a
situation that may leave them and their families vulnerable during times of
sickness, maternity, disability, retirement and death—contingencies that are
all covered by our Social Security
program,”
See said.
She added
the Social Security program “is supplemented by the Flexi-fund Program, a
mechanism for OFWs to maximize returns on their investments and benefit from an
additional layer of social security protection."
Enrollees
of the Flexi-fund Program—a provident fund type of scheme that allows OFWs
paying at the maximum monthly salary credit (MSC) to save on top of their
regular SSS contributions—reached 165,661 in 2013, up by eight percent from the
previous year.
Members'
Flexi-fund equity, meanwhile, rose to P388.5 million as of November 2013, as
compared to P330.1 million as of December 2012.
SSS
reminded OFWs of changes in the Social Security and Flexi-fund programs caused
by the new contribution schedule that took effect in January 2014.
Starting
this year, OFW contributions range from P550 based on the P5,000 minimum
monthly salary credit (MSC) for OFWs, to a maximum of P1,760 per month, in line
with the new P16,000 MSC ceiling and 11 percent contribution rate. The MSC
refers to the amount of monthly income covered by SSS contributions. — KBK, GMA
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