Social Security Law amendments seek ‘equality, solidarity’ — SSC  

AMMAN — Based on previous experiences, the social security system showed some gaps requiring urgent solutions, Al Rai Arabic daily quoted Director General of the Social Security Corporation (SSC) Hazem Rahahleh as saying on Tuesday .

In a meeting organised by Middle East University to present amendments to the Social Security Law, Rahahleh stressed that the SSC seeks to draft a law “that can guarantee social equality and solidarity”. 

Concerning early retirement, the proposed amendments will not include those with a 10-year tenure. The amendments raise the early retirement age to 55 for males and 52 for females, Rahahleh said, adding that “early retirement has become a challenge” for the corporation, according to SSC actuarial studies.

Early retirement has become “an occurrence that negatively affects employment and the national economy”, as many competent and experienced individuals are leaving their jobs. This also leads to a decrease in their retirement salaries.

Among the proposed amendments is the voluntary inclusion of the people from the Gaza Strip and the children of Jordanian mothers and non-Jordanian fathers, he noted.

Inflation will have an inverse relationship with early retirement salaries, Rahahleh said, highlighting that 100 per cent of annual bonuses will be given to those with salaries less than JD300, 75 per cent to those with salaries ranging from JD300 to JD500, and 50 per cent to those with salaries ranging from JD500 to JD1,000. 

For individuals with salaries of more than JD1,000, their salaries will be compared to the status of inflation in the year they decide to retire.

In the case of decreasing national economic growth, institutions are entitled to reduce the number of social security memberships, he said. 

A retirement salary for those deceased by natural causes will be allocated to the deceased’s inheritors, provided that the deceased already had 96 subscriptions, and the subscriber’s last payment should not be more than 60 months before the member’s death.

Rahahleh underlined that the SSC prioritises the issue of health insurance, noting that all members and retirees in the private sector will all be covered under a health insurance plan starting from the first quarter of 2022.

An amount of a maximum 3 per cent of the salary will be deducted to cover the health insurance fees, he added.

During the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, the number of subscribers benefiting from programmes launched to alleviate the repercussions of the pandemic reached 1,300,000 beneficiaries with a total value of JD718 million, he noted.