Southern African Development Communityadopts guidelines on social security benefits

Oliver Kazunga, Senior Business Reporter
THE employment and labour sector within the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) has adopted regional guidelines on portability of social security benefits.

The move ensures that workers moving across the bloc maintain social security rights and benefits acquired from different member states.

Such rights and benefits include pension, occupational injury and diseases benefits.

In a statement, Sadc said the guidelines seek to facilitate mutual administrative assistance between social security authorities in two or more countries.

“Following adoption of the guidelines, five-member States (Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe) committed to pilot their implementation through bilateral arrangements,” it said.

“Through implementation of the guidelines, the mentioned member states have agreed to co-operate on reciprocal measures to co-ordinate their national social security systems through mutual administrative assistance whereby migrant workers’ claims are processed through the agency of social security institutions in the country of destination.”

Such co-ordination, it said, also entails opportunity of migrant workers preserving their benefits by being able to extend their contribution periods after moving to another country within Sadc.

The regional bloc has, through the guidelines, agreed to ensure equality of treatment of nationals and migrant workers under the social security legislation of the member states, and to provide for the portability of benefits and improvement of the cross-border payment of social security benefits.

“The right to social security is a fundamental human right guaranteed to all persons. However, non-citizens are not always granted access to social security because of discriminatory provisions in national social security laws and the ‘nationality or territoriality principle’ of social security systems, which requires a claimant to be physically present in the country to be eligible for benefits,” said Sadc.

The bloc noted that such principles and provisions hinder the cross-border portability of social security benefits. “This is especially the case in the Sadc region, where the portability of social security benefits is limited because of the absence of a region-wide social security coordination agreement,” it said.

Sadc national social security systems are diverse in nature and this has led to the conclusion that it is difficult to develop baseline standards for the region and to adopt measures to coordinate the various countries’ social security systems.

“However, harmonisation of the various social security systems is not imperative to the conclusion of a multi-lateral social security agreement.

“All that may be required is a convergence of the social protection policies of the member States.
“Therefore, diversity in national social security systems and schemes does not preclude the adoption of a regional instrument for social security co-ordination,” it said.

The 16-member bloc noted that member States merely need to specify issues such as the social security risks or benefits (and scope of beneficiaries) to be covered; equality of treatment in the respective national systems; exportability of benefits; aggregation of insurance periods; determination of the legislation applicable and institutional as well as administrative co-operation. – @okazunga.