Jordan Labor Watch -
The Assistant Director General of the Social Security Corporation (SSC) Mohammad Odeh revealed the highlights of the proposed amendments to the Social Security Law.
Odeh stressed that the proposal to raise the early retirement age would not include those who had completed 120 or more subscriptions, equivalent to 10 years of actual subscriptions.
This was mentioned at a session organized by Jordan Labor Watch (an affiliate of the Phenix Center for Economic Studies), in collaboration with the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation, on the planned amendments to the Social Security Law.
During the session, Odeh clarified that the proposed increase in retirement age would be limited to participants with subscriptions of less than 120 to the 2019 amendments, as the early retirement age was raised to 52 years for females and 55 years for males. Additionally, it was applied to those who began their subscription to Social Security starting fromOctober 2019.
He pointed out the SSC’s interest in linking reductions of old age subscriptions to economic growth, explaining that if the national economy contracts for two or three consecutive years, it will guarantee the power to reduce old-age subscriptions, but the criteria for the reduction are still to be considered.
It is also proposed to increase the duration of the insured's persons benefits from unemployment insurance for those over 45 or 50 years of age to a full year instead of three months, with an estimated salary of 8% of the total open balance of the insured person for unemployment.
He stressed that the pension account to be contained in the new amendments will not affect those who subscribed before 2022, noting that it will include an early retirement by adding the value of inflation to their salaries, at rates less than 1% received by the relevant pensioners.
On the legislative stability of the Social Security Law, Odeh pointed out that the institution is committed to conducting actuarial studies every 3 years. The results conclude that amendments to the law itself are necessary, in order to achieve the purposes of the study.
The Phenix Center issued a position paper commenting on the announcement of the amendment to the early retirement age, in which it stressed the origin of introducing new social protections such as unemployment insurance and health insurance, in addition to raising pensions as early retirees receive it with the intention of moving to other jobs with additional payments to secure a decent life for their families.
The paper called for an amendment that would introduce unemployment insurance rather than being unemployed so that workers who were laid off before the obligatory retirement age could obtain an income through which they could live decently.
In the paper, the Phenix Centre called for social protections for pensioners and the elderly to provide them with a decent life and to reduce their dependence on pensions, before reviewing the number of salaries included in the pensions.
The Center called for an amendment that includes new categories of Social Security workers, which increases the income of funds, where non-umbrella employment accounts for about 48% of Jordan's total workforce.
According to the Center, a reduction in the cost of monthly subscriptions will attract hundreds of enterprises to engage their workers. Many employers are burdened with a single subscription for 21.75% of which 7.5% is deducted from the worker's wages.