SSC holds roundtable on social security subscription evasion

AMMAN — The Social Security Corporation (SSC) on Saturday held a brainstorming session with relevant stakeholders to discuss ways to encourage businesses to enrol secretaries in social security insurance. 

The SSC called on professional associations for lawyers, engineers, doctors and dentists as well as the Jordan Society for Medical and Laboratory Sciences to issue circulars urging their members to include secretaries in the SSC subscription.

Representatives of professional associations, human rights organisations and government institutions attended the session, according to an SSC statement.

SSC Spokesperson Musa Sbeihi said that all participants agreed on the importance of abiding by the Social Security Law, which ensures the right of secretaries to benefit from SSC insurance.

The SSC recently announced that only 1,100 of the Kingdom’s 7,000 private medical clinics are registered with the SSC, while around 84 per cent of private practitioners are not covering their employees.

As for orthodontic clinics, SSC figures show that only 130 out of 2,597 private clinics subscribe to social security, with 95 per cent of dentists depriving their support staff of the compulsory coverage.

Compliance figures are higher in private sector pharmacies, as 656 out of a total of 2,508 have subscribed their employees to the SSC.

Sbeihi said that one of the most important outcomes of the session was that representatives acknowledged the presence of the evasion problem, and highlighted the significance of solving it as soon as possible.

Other outcomes included the professional associations’ readiness to cooperate with the SSC in raising workers’ awareness of their rights, and the syndicates’ agreement to provide the SSC with the names and addresses of affiliated members, the spokesperson noted.

He also announced that the corporation will intensify its media campaign and inspections, aimed at including all secretaries at clinics, law firms, engineering offices and other small enterprises in the SSC subscription, the statement added.