3,706 women benefit from SSC’s Care programme

AMMAN — A total of 3,706 women who subscribe to the Social Security Corporation (SSC) have benefitted from the Care programme worth JD320 million, according to a statement sent to The Jordan Times.

The Care programme, launched in October 2020, is one of the SSC’s maternity services for female subscribers.

The childcare assistance programme provides financial assistance to female subscribers who earn less than JD1,000 per month and have a valid subscription, SSC spokesperson Ali Khataleen told The Jordan Times.

According to the statement, there are currently 159 daycares included in the programme.

Beneficiaries can either receive JD25 per month, or financial assistance, to contribute to their children’s monthly daycare subscription. Beneficiaries receive financial aid for up to six months, according to the statement.

“Almost 3,520 women benefitted from housing financial aid and 201 benefitted from the daycare financial aid,” said the statement.

“The Care programme was launched recently, but we still have a long way to go. We are working on an awareness campaign to raise private sector employees’ awareness about the benefits of the programme,” Huda Ayesh, Women Economic Empowerment Action Plan director, told The Jordan Times.

Ayesh added that the aim of this programme is to enhance women’s economic participation.

Women’s economic participation in Jordan only reached 14.2 per cent in 2020, according to the Department of Statistics (DoS).

Ayesh added that women’s low economic participation is due to several cultural, economic and social reasons.

The high cost of annual daycare tuition and the absence of daycares in some Jordanian governorates are just some of the reasons for low female economic participation, Ayesh said citing research from the Women Economic Action Plan.