August 31: The Social Security Fund (SSF) has been able to draw the private sector towards its schemes amid coronavirus pandemic. The contributors have deposited double the amount than before during the lockdown period alone.

The state-promoted fund had a total deposits of Rs 850 million before the lockdown ever since its establishment since the beginning of the last fiscal year. The fund has grown to Rs 1.72 billion after the government imposed a lockdown on March 24. However, the finance ministry is yet to release Rs 860 million of the three months of lockdown period (mid-April to mid-July) although it has already approved the amount.

According to the work procedure of the Social Security Fund, private sector registered with the fund should contribute 31 percent of the employees’ salary including 20 percent by the employers in return for pension and other facilities post retirement.

The government had announced to deposit the amount on behalf of the private sector for the lockdown period considering the loss of business due to the current crisis.

The government had made such announcement while unveiling the budget for the current fiscal year. Only those organisations that have been listed in the SSF and have been contributing to it can benefit from the government relief.

The government has made arrangement for the employers to borrow the deposited amount to pay the salary of the staffers for the time being.

There is also a provision in the SSF to invest the deposited amount elsewhere after preparing a separate work procedure for this. However, Executive Director of SSF Kapil Mani Gyawali says that although they have presented the work procedure to the government, it is yet to be approved.

“The work procedure is currently under discussion in the cabinet. We don’t know when it will be approved,” said Gyawali.

He further said that the SSF will attract more contributors once the floodgates for investment gets opened after the approval of the work procedure.

Executive Director Gyawali further said that 508 new employers and around 22,000 employees working in those organisations have been added to the network of SSF after the lockdown was imposed.

Mostly, private companies associated with the tourism business, airline companies, industries, NGOs, co-operatives, manpower companies have been registered during the lockdown period.

A total of 172,350 employees associated with 12,043 enterprises have been registered with the SSF as of August 29.