SSC urges private practitioners to enrol employees in social security

AMMAN — The Social Security Corporation (SSC) on Wednesday conducted a visit to Al Khalidi Street in the capital as part of an awareness campaign to promote insurance coverage for secretaries working in the medical industry.

The area is home to several private medical and dental clinics, healthcare centres and labs, as well as pharmacies set up around Al Khalidi Hospital.

The campaign aims to urge female secretaries to raise the issue of their exclusion from the SSC’s insurance services with their employers, according to an SSC statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times.

The SSC employees detailed the benefits of social security insurance, which is compulsory by law for all workers in Jordan.

During their visit, SSC staff also answered questions by employees and employers regarding SSC subscriptions, the statement said.

SSC Spokesperson Musa Sbeihi told The Jordan Times in a phone interview he was “surprised” to find that the compliance of facilities at the medical hub with social security subscription “was only at around 50 per cent”.

“We expected Al Khalidi area to be at least 80 to 90 per cent compliant, so today’s visit is indicative of how rampant [subscription evasion] must be in the rest of the country,” said Sbeihi, adding that the SSC team surveyed 10 to 12 complexes housing at least 100 medical facilities during the visit.

Some 1,100 clinics out of the Kingdom’s 7,000 private clinics are registered with the SSC, with a ratio of around 84 per cent of private practitioners not covering their employees, the SSC statement said.

As for orthodontic clinics, SSC figures show that 130 out of 2,597 private clinics are social security subscribers, with 95 per cent of dentists depriving their supporting staff of the compulsory privilege.

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

“Very few of the female secretaries we talked to were unaware of their rights, but many were afraid to speak,” Sbeihi said, adding that the SSC employees involved in the campaign seek to “raise awareness, not reproach” offenders.

“Some doctors cited the intermittent nature of the employment of secretaries as an excuse, with many quitting within one to three months of recruitment,” the official explained.

“But there was a percentage who were very understanding and supportive,” he said.

“Sometimes we did not find the doctors at their clinics, so we told the secretaries to deliver our message,” the SSC media director  added, noting that the campaign entails urging all private practitioners to “recognise the importance of the [SSC] retirement programme” and rectify their businesses in accordance with the law.

According to the statement, violations vary in degree, with some private practices not registered with the SSC at all. Others cover only a portion of their workforce, or register their personnel based on a lower salary than what they actually earn.

“Some secretaries told us they are indeed registered with the SSC, but that they pay the full subscription amount themselves, as they are enrolled under the optional subscription programme,” Sbeihi said, warning that this is “against the law” and is a “great injustice” to staff members.