According to today's pandemic breakdown from the Ministry of Health and Wellness, 9,791 people have been infected with COVID-19 since March. There are also 530 cases currently under investigation. So, if you disregard the total number of victims, and the unknown number of immigrants detected in all that testing, that's still a huge number of sick benefit claims that the Social Security Board has to address.
So today, we went inquiring, and the Acting CEO told us that as of December 13th, last Sunday, SSB has paid out just over 1.2 million dollars in sickness benefits. She granted us an interview via zoom teleconference this morning:
Deborah Ruiz - Acting CEO, SSB "I have information up to December 13th. We have a total of 2,633 claims. Of that, it's 1.2 million dollars, $1,219,140 to be precise. That amounted to 31,580 days being paid for those 2,633 claims. And that is broken down across all districts. We would say for the males, we have 1,504 males who we have paid, and females, 1,129 females. And that breakdown is because they're sick with COVID, or because of isolation, or it is unknown. You're being quarantined because of suspected cases."
Later on in our conversation, we probed a bit more about how the ongoing pandemic is impacting the country's social security apparatus. And, that's when the Acting CEO shared that SSB is bracing for a loss of approximately 22 million dollars in contribution revenue for 2020. The reason for this massive downturn is due to the many Belizeans, estimated to be somewhere between 31 thousand and 34 thousand, who were paying until they suddenly lost their jobs when the pandemic finally landed on our shores. Here's that part of our conversation with Deborah Ruiz:
Reporter "Are there any concerns that you guys at SSB are noticing in terms of the trending up of cases? And at what point do the pay-outs become a burden or an undue burden on our Social Security system?"
Deborah Ruiz "Well, this is what we're here for, to pay benefits. The concern is not so much that we're paying out benefits. What is of concern is the drop in revenue. Because of the lockdown in April, as you know, we had a moratorium, and we had delayed payments, and we have a high incidence of unemployment, especially in the tourism sector. That, the actuary is projecting, will have a significant impact. We're waiting until - we won't get the final numbers until January, to see how we performed for the entire 2020. But, I can tell you that the numbers trending so far is showing that it could go as high as 22 million dollars loss of revenue this year. We have our commitment to pay benefits. And as you know, part of the contribution reform was to pay more. So, we are paying a higher rate of benefits because the insurable earning is higher, especially for the higher-earning people, which more likely are the people who still have jobs. So, those are the higher benefits that we're paying. So, that is the give and take there. We will, more than likely, report a loss this year, but we should be based on - because Social Security is projected over the long term. So, we'll have this ebb and flow as, as I mentioned, in terms of revenue vs pay-out. It might be off-balance this year, but that is imponderable. We don't know where COVID will take us. I have some reports of some business [who] have, in fact, closed their doors permanently. So, that is a loss of revenue. We have people who we only had a loss for a couple of months of the year, and they rebounded. Once the airport opened up, and once the lockdown was eased up, some businesses were able to go back to work, if not full-time, part-time. So, we see a drop in perhaps the rate, but we had continued. We started the year with over 101 thousand people expected to contribute. The numbers are between 67 to 70 thousand who are contributing."
The Acting CEO shared SSB's concern that some Belizeans may start to become ineligible to claim sickness benefit if their inability to pay their contributions becomes an extended problem. She said that this is an issue facing other CARICOM nations and that there is an intention to consult the International Labour Organization on how best to implement some sort of unemployment benefit.
