The issue or challenge addressed by our practice: Proclamation No. 715/2003 excluded a majority of private organization employees (definite period employees and management staff) from pension scheme coverage.

Technical aid or support products are among the most important factors in terms of human development for disabled and elderly persons. The objective is to mitigate or compensate for limitations when performing various activities of daily living such as eating, dressing, personal hygiene, mobility for the bedridden, play and leisure time, productivity and work activities as well as improving independence and quality of life.

Within the framework of the Comprehensive Policy on Care for the Elderly (Política Integral de Atención a los Adultos Mayores), and in order to extend training to all those who need to take care of older persons, the State Employees’ Social Security and Social Services Institute (Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado – ISSSTE) offers a multimedia course, which is available in the institutional portal.

Every year, the world is battered by natural phenomena, and their effects disrupt daily human life. Thunderstorms, floods, volcanic eruptions and forest fires are becoming ever more common across all regions of Argentina.

In response to this, a number of presidential decrees have provided for temporary supplements in the amount of 100 per cent of family allowance, unemployment benefit and pension payments to thousands of people seriously affected by natural phenomena to reduce the economic impact of such events.

The Social Protection Longitudinal Survey (Encuesta Longitudinal de Protección Social – ELPS) was part of the “support program for better management of the social protection system”, which aims to strengthen the capacity to formulate and implement policies on social security, education, housing, employment, health, disability, and care among other things. Therefore, the conditions and capacities required to continue with future ELPS phases were generated, with the Social Insurance Bank (Banco de Previsión Social – BPS) as the managing institution.

The National Pension Scheme Authority (NAPSA) was created by an Act of Parliament “The NPS Act” No. 40 of 1996 to provide social security cover to all eligible employees in Zambia in case of retirement, invalidity or death. Since commencement of operations in February 2000, NAPSA has largely focused on the formal sector. However, this sector constitutes only 16 percent (950,000 people) of the total employed population of 5.8 million people (Zambia Labour Force Survey Report, 2014). The remaining 84 percent is made up of employees from the informal sector. 

The 21st century advent in our country of the sharing economy, which involves the contracting of goods and services through electronic platforms, has led to the emergence of disruptive enterprises such as the hiring of transport services through mobile phone applications.

Among several other social security benefits, the National Social Security Authority (NSSA) of Zimbabwe pays a funeral grant of USD 300 under the Pension and Other Benefits Scheme. The benefit is paid to provide assistance towards the burial of a member who would have contributed to the scheme for a minimum period of 12 months. The USD 300 payout is insufficient to cover basic funeral expenses. In an endeavour to accord every retirement pensioner a decent burial, NSSA contracted Econet Life to provide funeral services to NSSA retirement pensioners.

Single tax is an option designed for self-employed workers to pay contributions and taxes in a simplified way. Social security (retirement and health) and tax (VAT and income tax) contributions are collected together as a fixed monthly fee. To join the scheme, one has to comply with billing parameters including business surface area, electricity consumed and rental.

There are 3,373,712 single-tax contributors registered in Argentina.

The National Historical Reparation Programme  (Programa Nacional de Reparación Histórica) was established with the aim of implementing settlement agreements between the National Social Security Administration (Administración Nacional de la Seguridad Social ‒ ANSES) and retirees/pensioners to adjust their pensions and to settle pension debts owed to beneficiaries who voluntarily participated and met the criteria laid out in Act No. 27.260.

The Housing Fund of the State Employees’ Social Security and Social Services Institute (Fondo de la Vivienda del Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado – FOVISSSTE), in collaboration with the State Employees’ Social Security and Social Services Institute’s (Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado – ISSSTE) “National Medical Center November 20”, promoted a pilot program to design an accessible, sustainable and quality housing prototype for people with different abilities.

The Social Insurance Bank (Banco de Previsión Social – BPS), guided by the aim to become more efficient and effective at managing Economic Benefits, has implemented online services to enable a beneficiary in need of eyeglasses to directly bring a prescription issued by an ophthalmologist and an identity card to an authorized optician, who then validates whether the benefit is to be granted or not.

The system verifies beforehand whether the user is eligible for the benefit or not, pending the granting or refusal of the benefit.

The Community Health Fund (CHF) in Tanzania was established in 2001. Due to the dual role of “Provider” and “Purchaser” of health service played by the Council Health Boards (CHBs) such a design setup has faced challenges of poor management of funds, persistent shortage of services and unreliable membership data. CHF members access services from dispensary level up to district hospital within the Council. As such, unsatisfactory performance of the CHF in most of the councils continue to discourage people to enrol with CHFs subsequently sharply dropout rate of members each year.

The mining sector is naturally hazardous and as such it poses significant danger to the health of workers through mineral dust exposure causing occupational lung conditions in extreme circumstances and excessive noise exposure predisposing workers to irreversible hearing impairment. To address this challenge the National Social Security Authority (NSSA) of Zimbabwe through its Occupational Safety and Health Division procured mobile clinic in September 2016.

The goal of the Universal Pension for the Elderly (Pensión Universal para el Adulto Mayor ‒ PUAM) is to guarantee the right to a dignified old age, regardless of individual contributory capacity.

The Historical Reparation for Retirees and Pensioners Act (Ley de Reparación Histórica para Jubilados y Pensionados) of June 2016 provides for the current pension benefits of retirees and pensioners to be fully recalculated and where the discrepancies are in the beneficiaries’ favour, settlement offers are offered and which are then subject to judiciary approval to avoid future litigation.

June 2015: after taking up the post of Director of Foreign Travel at the Social Health Insurance Institute (Seguro Social de Salud – EsSalud), I had the following experience: a patient had come back from a foreign country after spending a month there and I decided to go with him to his first check-up in Peru. The attending doctor looked at me and asked “What do you want me to do with this patient? He has had a type of treatment that we don’t use in this country and I’m not familiar with it.

The IMSS Digital mobile application is part of the modern model of digital care strategy implemented by the Mexican Social Security Institute (Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social – IMSS) in 2013. The IMSS Digital application is a digital channel aimed at the Institute’s strategic objective of deregulating, streamlining and digitizing services and procedures in order to reduce costs and processing times, and enhance quality and user-friendly services. 

Prior to 2015, the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) was only offering Inpatient services to the members on a rebate system. This arrangement was still deficient in breadth for some crucial medical services required by its members, specifically, surgical care and specialized laboratory investigations. This meant that members were still incurring out-of-pocket expenditure to access advanced treatment.

Prior to the introduction of the Collective Scheme for Retirement Allowances (Régime collectif d’allocation de retraite – RCAR) in 1978 and in the absence of a statutory retirement scheme to cover them, several public establishments in Morocco managed their own retirement funds (special schemes, railway workers, mining personnel, water and electricity managers). This however suffered from the following limitations and drawbacks:

Employers are required to register as enterprises and to register their staff, then pay the corresponding social security contributions. When the employer does not do this, the employees may do it themselves. What has been found in practice is that many employers either do not register themselves or their staff, as a result of which the latter cannot access the social security benefits provided by the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS).

A voluntary insurance scheme for independent workers and workers from the informal sector was established in 2014, in line with regulations. In an effort to make this scheme known to all concerned sectors of the population and to facilitate the enrolment of the greatest possible number, the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) developed a system involving the accreditation of social secretariats.

The National Social Security Fund for Non-Salaried Workers (Caisse nationale de sécurité sociale des non-salariés – CASNOS) oversees the compulsory coverage of social insurance and retirement benefit risks of independent farm and non-farm workers operating in Algeria. It manages the collection of compulsory contributions.

The farming industry experienced difficult times in the 1990s, during which farmers were unable to pay their contributions, resulting in the loss of all benefits for themselves and their dependants. 

As part of the introduction of health insurance for private and parastatal sector employees in June 2014, the National Health Insurance and Social Guarantee Fund (Caisse nationale d'assurance maladie et de garantie sociale – CNAMGS) initially entrusted the task of collecting contributions to the National Social Security Fund (Caisse nationale de sécurité sociale – CNSS).

Financial institutions in Africa have successfully plugged into the mobile ecosystem and deployed services that have revolutionized service delivery, transforming customer engagement touch points and feedback mechanisms as well as enhancing responsiveness of the financial institutions. In addition to this mobile tech has enabled financial penetration. Currently Kenya has 68 per cent financial penetration through mobile tech and is at 80 per cent in use. While many Social Security services providers use mobile technology, they are still to fully leverage on its capabilities.

Since 2014, a cash benefit allowance is paid to millions of recipients in the month of March of every year to the most needy people and families. This benefit is called the “March Permanent Family Benefit” (Aporte Familiar Permanente Marzo – AFPM) which consolidates through the use of better technology the payment of various extraordinary allowances dating back to 2009 by standardizing the process, setting the selection criteria for beneficiaries, and issuing beneficiaries’ lists.

It has been recognized that a major challenge in developing countries is how to ensure that the poor are included in health financing arrangements and they can access benefit from health insurance coverage as the non-poor.

The National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNaPS) is continuing its efforts to extend social security coverage in Madagascar. An initiative to expand awareness raising activities has become a laudable strategy in terms of its achievements. In 2014 it launched a programme for Catholic school leaders that promotes and raises awareness on the provisions of social security and of their responsibilities regarding such rights.

An application was launched to facilitate access to the information and services of the National Social Security Administration (Administración Nacional de la Seguridad Social – ANSES) through mobile phones, which are widespread among the population.

The Old Age Security (OAS) program is the Government of Canada’s largest pension program. It is funded out of the Government’s general tax revenues, which means that beneficiaries do not pay into it directly. This program provides eligible seniors with basic income in retirement through the OAS Pension and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS).

In Madagascar, a large proportion of the population lacks access to social protection, especially rural producers. For more than a decade, government policy and legislation have foreseen the extension of social security coverage to the entire working population. However, only the scheme for salaried employees is in existence to provide such generalized social security coverage.

As part of the extension of the third-party payment system, a new system was launched in 2012 and is gradually being introduced nationwide to enable a category of insured persons with medical and income-related conditions to benefit from the coverage of the cost of eyeglasses without advance payments. 

The National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) has been focusing its efforts to recruit members from the informal sector in a bid to achieve Universal Health Coverage. Further, NHIF has also engaged strategic partners to cover the indigents. This meant that there was need for innovations to meet the needs of this target group. One area of concern was how NHIF would collect insurance premiums from members in the informal sector.

The objective of the program is to work to ensure that indigenous people and vulnerable rural communities of our country fully enjoy and exercise their social security rights from an integrated perspective, through institutional action that ensures access to the National Social Security Administration (Administración Nacional de la Seguridad Social – ANSES) benefits without discrimination and respecting their culture and socio-economic characteristics.

The National Social Security and Insurance Trust (NASSIT) was established through an Act of Parliament and is charged with the responsibility of administering the Sierra Leone Pension Scheme. NASSIT started full operations in January 2002 as a partially funded defined benefit pension plan which requires a member to contribute for at least 180 months on/before they retire at age 60 to qualify for full retirement pension.

The national reference center for birth defects and rare diseases (Centro de Referencia Nacional de Defectos Congénitos y Enfermedades Raras – CRENADECER) is a unit of the Social Insurance Bank (Banco de Previsión Social – BPS). The center for access to assistive technologies (Centro de Acceso a Tecnologías de Apoyo – CATA) is located therein, and its goal is to approach disability in a way that promotes equal opportunities in relation to technology, using computers to assist with rehabilitation.

We passed through several stages of development, including the measures to expand the coverage, which can be summarized as follows: