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Secure migrants' money

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-08-14 15:45

Will a migrant worker who has paid into his or her social security accounts at different localities finally get his or her pension where he or she retires?

This is impossible for the time being as social security funds in different localities are managed locally and there is no unified system for transferring such an account from one locality to another.

As a result, many migrant workers had to withdraw the money they paid for social security and close their accounts in South China's Guangdong province early this year when they made up their mind to leave for a job in another province.

A research institute under the National Development and Reform Commission has recently come up with a scheme to solve this problem for migrant workers, and it was put up to the commission and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security last week.

Rather than restructuring the social security systems in different localities into a unified national one, this scheme designs a package of transactions to circumvent the big operation, which cannot possibly be accomplished in the near future.

When a person who has paid into his or her social security account for some time and leaves for another place to work, he or she can just notify the relevant department, which will keep the account and give him or her a document. He or she can do the same in another locality. Finally, when he or she retires, he or she will be able to get his or her pension from these different accounts in different localities.

This scheme is not complicated. What is actually needed are some more efforts from social security management workers in different localities at different levels to keep well the accounts migrant workers have left behind.

Then a system is needed to transfer the pension based on the amount of money in a particular account to where the pensioner stays. With advanced computer technology, this should not be a problem, either.

If this scheme is put into operation, migrant workers will not have to worry about the money they have paid for their future pension in any locality.

If only the scheme were worked out earlier, many migrant workers would have been spared the agony of having to close their social security accounts in despair. A stronger sense of serving migrant workers and anticipation of their potential problems will make similar policies more desirable in the future.