Today the Social Security Board held its annual SSB Connect. It's a public forum in which they discuss their operations and activities with their stakeholders in order to maintain transparency. It also allows stakeholders to be aware of the challenges and strategies the board is taking.
We spoke to the outgoing CEO about some of the highlights.
Deborah Ruiz, CEO, SSB
"In terms of operations, we will be looking more as you indicated what our online platform is. It's not going as fast as we would like because we're dealing with a vast 42 years of data that we have to clean up and make sure that when it's online, customers will be able to see their contribution payments, and then we're working on deploying the benefits module, the sickness benefits will be the first one coming online shortly, so persons have the opportunity to file their medical claims online. We will have a medical portal where the medical providers are able to do the medical certificates and full transparency in terms of the process and how long your claim will take from the time you submit it to the time the payment is in your bank account."
"It's not easy to change, you have the concerns and all that that we need to address. We're also looking at operations, having discussions with our stakeholders, we have been heavily involved in discussions and a social protections strategy so that document is now with the government to review and provide further feedback as to how we look at that. You may recall that our contribution reform, one of the recommendations at the time was that we need to see how we can phase out the non-contributory pension. The social protection strategy is looking how we can create a universal protection floor so those are long discussions that are happening."
And despite the tension with the unions that we told you about earlier, the NTUCB and the CWU were also represented at the forum. We spoke to them.
Trisha Perez, Dir. of Education, NTUCB
"We were invited to join in the SSB connect today. What we've been doing over the last few years, we've been participating with the social protection floor and to see how best we can increase social protection for all workers in Belize along with the rest of the society."
"My presence today is to celebrate, of course, the good reviews that SSB is getting. Being from the union it doesn't mean that we don't know that there are very good things happening there and so we are here, I am here particularly, first time at the SSB Connect to celebrate the good reviews that's happening."
