Many businesses in Vietnam have been found to owe annual premiums for social and health insurance to the tune of almost VND8,573 trillion (US$408 million) in the first four months of the year.
To resolve this issue, Vietnam Social Insurance is coordinating with the police department to clamp down on insurance premium dodgers and collect a backlog of debts.
The number of companies owing social and health insurance premiums have increased in recent years, said a representative of Vietnam Social Insurance.
Many of the defaulting companies are healthy profitable businesses, yet they deliberately avoid paying annual insurance premiums for their workers, disregarding workers’ rights, added the representative.
To be able to dodge paying insurance premiums, many companies sign labor contracts with workers for less than a three month period.
This continuous dodging of payments of social and health insurance premiums have now begun to affect insurance companies, hence the necessity to work with the police to apprehend dodgers and collect premium debts.
Social and health insurance inspectors have also detected some medical units in provinces and cities who are misusing health insurance funds. Now Vietnam Social Insurance is trying to implement measures to minimise default in health insurance premium payments.
Police have said that any company caught violating social and health insurance regulations will be penalised and forced to pay up debts.
