BAGUIO CITY – Some 5,737 employers in the Baguio and Benguet areas were discovered to be delinquent members of the Social Security System (SSS) for alleged intermittent payment of contributions of their workers among others.
Nancy Umoso, SSS Baguio branch head, said there are 14,427 registered employers with the SSS in the city and the ten towns of Benguet, excluding Bakun, Buguias and Mankayan which are under the jurisdiction of the corporation’s Bontoc branch.
Of the aforesaid number of registered employers, Umoso disclosed a total of 7,690 employers or a little below 50 percent are said to be regularly paying employers which guarantees that their employees are also updated in their payments to the SSS for both the employer’s and employee’s counterpart in the SSS contributions.
“We classified the 5,737 employers as intermittently paying because they have gaps in their records which means that there are months which the employers were not able to remit their contributions for reasons only known to them,” Umoso stressed.
The SSS Baguio branch head revealed of the 5,737 intermittently paying employers, 1,872 employers have registered with the corporation but are now classified as non-paying because they never paid a single centavo of their contributions.
Further, some 705 employers were already forwarded to the legal department of the corporation for study and recommendation on the need to file charges against them for allegedly failing to submit a detailed report of their employees, unremitted contributions, failure to update records and failure to declare actual number of workers among others.
“We are seriously and aggressively pursuing cases against erring employers to protect the members from such serious violations that prevent them from enjoying the full SSS benefits due them once they are separated or retire from the their chosen fields of service,” Umoso added.
Under Section 28€ of the penal clause of Republic Act (RA) 8282 or the SSS Law, a failure or refusal of an employer to register their employees or deduct contributions from the employee’s compensation and remit the same to the SSS, corresponds to a penalty of fine from P5,000 to P20,000 or imprisonment from six years to twelve years.
Umoso explained there were delinquent employers in almost all sectors that is why the SSS has intensified its operations in order to monitor the compliance of employers to their obligations under the law in order to give justice to the services rendered by the employees in the upliftment of their respective businesses.
The SSS official called on employers to frequently update their records with the corporation, especially of they have newly hired workers, because they are mandated to immediately report the presence of additional workers, increase in the salaries and wages of their workers and their status, to allow the enrolment of their workers to the SSS and update their records.
On the other hand, Umoso appealed to the employees to also have the obligation to visit the SSS branch office in order to verify whether or not their employers have reported their being hired as workers so that they will know their status on whether or not they are already SSS members.
By Dexter A. See
