Unemployment benefits stalled
The director of the employment department of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, Nguyen Dai Dong, spoke to Dai Doan Ket (Great Solidarity) newspaper about unemployment insurance.
Almost 5,000 laid-off workers across the nation have already registered for unemployment insurance, which began to be implemented at the beginning of the year. Why haven’t any of these workers received any unemployment payments yet?
The reason that none of these laid-off labourers have received any unemployment payments is simply that work on certifying unemployment procedures only started recently. It takes 22 days to process applications for unemployment benefits.
Labourers should also pay attention to the Unemployment Insurance Law. The law states that labourers must register their unemployed status within seven days of losing their jobs or completing their labour contracts. They must submit all the documents required for unemployment allowances during the next 15 days.
The law says labourers will not get unemployment allowances if they fail to meet the deadlines, that is if they do not fulfil the procedures within 22 days.
Labourers in cities and provinces have found they lack the necessary social insurance books when registering for unemployment benefits. How can they overcome this problem?
This is one of the biggest difficulties in implementing unemployment insurance at the moment. The lack of social insurance books is not only an obstacle to implementing the unemployment insurance policy but it also impacts on the interests of labourers. The reason that most labourers don’t have their social insurance books yet is because of their employers who have sometimes been slow in paying social and unemployment insurance to their employees, and sometimes even avoiding these payments altogether.
However, to ensure labourers’ interests, employers who are more than one month late in paying their workers social insurance premiums must refund the premium.
Authorities in the southern province of Binh Duong are getting around this obstacle by granting unemployment certificates to laid-off labourers. By doing so, labourers can submit these certificates and other papers while their social insurance books are being processed to receive unemployment payments. It is a creative solution and does not go against the law. Such measures will be studied and possibly be applied nationwide to create favourable conditions for laid-off labourers. Drastic measures will also be taken to force employers to pay unemployment insurance premiums for their employees.
Laid-off workers are entitled to vocational training and assistance in looking for new work. But many labourers avoid getting help in finding new work because they are afraid they will be stuck with a new job that is not suitable for them. What do you think about this?
Vocational training and job introduction are among the measures we have applied to help labourers stabilise their lives and not fall into long-term unemployment. Therefore, laid-off labourers must accept low-income jobs in the beginning. They cannot be too choosy and demand good jobs when they are unemployed. — VNS