AMMAN — The
estidama program will come to an end later this month, when financial
allocations for it will come to a halt, the spokesperson of the
Social Security Corporation (SSC), Shaman Al-Majali, said.
اضافة اعلان
Majali told
Jordan
News that the SSC launched the program in December 2020 to pay the wages of
workers in the sectors that were mostly affected by lockdowns during the
COVID-19 pandemic. The government contributed two-thirds to the program’s
budget, with the remainder coming from the SSC.
He said the SSC
moved to the “
Estidama Plus” program to expand social security coverage through
a $6 million grant from the governments of the Netherlands and Norway. The
funds were used to support the “fragile and weak sectors”, where employers could
not afford to pay the wages of their workers during the lockdowns.
That included the
agricultural sector, which does not subscribe to SSC, and the self-employed,
such as tour guides and taxi drivers. He said the program, which continued for
18 months, provided income to Jordanian and non-Jordanian workers, including
refugees, valued at a maximum of JD100.
In the third phase
of the program, the SSC moved to the “recovery program”, when economic activity
began.
Majali said that
the number of Estidama beneficiaries reached 100,000 workers and 7,000
facilities. He stressed that the reasons for the continuation of the program
ceased “as we are all in the stage of recovery from COVID-19”.
Abdul-Jawad
Al-Natsheh, a lawyer who specializes in labor affairs, said the SSC “has
fulfilled its duty to provide social protection” to people in need of
assistance. “Now, it is the employers’ duty to cover their employees’ salaries,
and there is a legitimate fear of not being able to cover it”.
“There are some
institutions and factories, which did not operate so far and their workers have
been receiving assistance from Estidama,” he said. He expressed his concern
about their fate, explaining that the number of these factories and
institutions “is a few, but the number of workers is huge”. He said he did not
have the exact numbers.
Hamada Abu Nijmeh,
the head of the Workers’ House, said that assistance programs, like Estidama,
“were supposed to stop a long time ago, since there was no need for it because
it supported the private sector institutions, not the workers”.
He said the
programs also allowed a 25 percent reduction in workers’ wages, as did
“Estidama Plus” for example. Moreover, it deprived the workers of being covered
by old-age insurance in order to reduce the burden of contributions to it.
“This is contrary to the existence of the insurance
system, which was found to serve workers and provide insurance for them in the
cases of disability, old age, work injuries, occupational diseases,
unemployment, and maternity,” he said.
“These tasks are
well-established in international standards, ratified by Jordan, and are
stipulated in national legislation,” he said. He insisted that providing
assistance to employers, whether in the form of grants or loans, can be
funneled through other institutions.
He said the program
allowed the employer to reduce the workers’ wages by 15 percent and gave some
establishments the right to reduce the old age contribution for all or some of
their employees by 50 percent.
“This unjustified
infringement on the rights of workers and the future of their benefits in
old-age insurance upon their retirement, did not leave the workers any option
and gave unrestricted power to employers,” he added.
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