Helping employees and businesses ease difficulties

The Covid-19 epidemic has lasted for nearly two years, especially in May and June 2021, Bac Giang became the epicentre of the whole country, with production and business activities of many enterprises severely affected. With the support of Party committees and authorities at all levels and the efforts of businesses themselves, now 369 enterprises in six industrial parks have resumed operations (reaching 100 percent of enterprises before the epidemic).

A production line at Ha Bac Export Garment Joint Stock Company.

However, some enterprises are still facing difficulties as they are unable to export and import goods, forcing workers to temporarily stop working or terminating labour contracts. In that context, businesses expect support policies to reduce immediate difficulties, maintain production and business, create jobs and stable incomes for employees.

Nguyen Hong Hai, head of the Revenue Management Department under the provincial Social Security Agency, said: “Currently, the agency focuses on guiding businesses to carry out procedures to enjoy support policies. The condition for enterprises to temporarily stop paying the retirement and survivorship funds is that they have paid premiums for employees until April 2021, but due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, they have to cut down at least 15 percent of the number of employees (participating in social insurance) compared to April 2021. This is the second time businesses have been supported to suspend payments to the retirement and survivorship funds since the Covid-19 broke out”.

As an enterprise specializing in the production of garment products, Ha Bac Export Garment Joint Stock Company (Viet Yen district) has 4,885 employees. Nguyen Thi Thanh, head of the company’s Organization and Administration Division, said that the company had to urge many workers to temporarily stop working. Facing this difficulty, the enterprise sent a dossier to the provincial Social Security Agency to request the suspension of payments to the retirement and survivorship funds for employees. The agency quickly appraised the dossier and allowed the company to temporarily suspend payments to the retirement and survivorship funds from August 2021 to January 2022 with an amount of more than 4.4 billion VND (193,356 USD) per month.

After two rounds of implementing this support policy, the province now has 14 units temporarily suspending payment to the retirement and survivorship funds with a total amount of more than 30 billion VND (1.32 million USD).

Following up activities to support businesses

Along with suspending payments to the retirement and survivorship funds, the social insurance sector has implemented the policy of reducing occupational accident and disease insurance premiums from 0.5 percent to zero percent of the salary fund for a period of 12 months from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022 for units. Up to now, the provincial Social Security Agency has allowed 4,041 units to reduce their contributions to the occupational accident and disease insurance fund for nearly 238,000 employees with an amount of more than 62.9 billion VND (2.76 million USD) in 12 months.

Providing consultancy on social insurance policies for employees in Bac Giang city.

The suspension of payments to the retirement and survivorship funds, and the reduction of occupational accident and occupational disease insurance premiums are practical policies to support businesses in difficult times due to the current epidemic. Therefore, in the coming time, the provincial Social Security Agency will continue to advise and guide businesses to enjoy support policies and directly notify the units affected by the epidemic to grasp information promptly.

At the same time, the agency will continue to review and check information to not let any employers taking advantage of the epidemic to evade paying social insurance, health insurance and unemployment insurance premiums for employees.

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