The Social Security System (SSS) has inked an agreement with two cooperatives in the province of Antique that will allow around 8,000 members to pay and receive their contributions on their premises.
SSS partnered with Belison and Hamtic Multi-Purpose Cooperatives (MPC), allowing them to accept contribution payments and facilitate the online transactions of their members who are also SSS members.
Under the SSS Accreditation Program for Cooperatives, SSS President and Chief Executive Officer Rolando Ledesma Macasaet said that authorized cooperatives can collect and remit the SSS and Employees’ Compensation (EC) contributions, noting that “their members can also pay their monthly loan amortizations through this arrangement.”
“Establishing durable partnerships with cooperatives is crucial in securing the active SSS membership of our members as well as in fulfilling member-borrowers’ responsibility to pay their monthly amortizations regularly,” Macasaet said.
Aside from being SSS collection partners, cooperatives are also authorized to facilitate selected SSS transactions such as membership and My.SSS registrations, disbursement account enrollment, and online submission of benefit and loan applications.
“In providing such assistance to its members, the cooperatives may claim a service fee of P6.00 from SSS for every processed and approved transaction,” Macasaet added.
As part of the agreement, more than 2,000 co-op members who do not have SSS membership will also be registered as SSS members.
Through these Antique-based cooperatives, he said SSS could ensure their members’ social security protection and eliminate the hassle of going to the agency’s Antique branch.
“It will give their members a more convenient way of conducting SSS transactions through Hamtic and Belison MPC. It will also help them save money because they no longer have to visit SSS Antique, which is approximately 8 to 16 kilometers away from their towns, for their SSS transactions,” Macasaet said.
The Hamtic and Belison MPC will join SSS’ list of existing partner cooperatives in Antique: DAO MPC, Barbaza MPC, Patnongon MPC, Pandan MPC, and Libertad MPC.
On the other hand, the SSS chief and other top officials also met with over 100 employers, barangay officials, self-employed members, and local media practitioners in a stakeholder’s forum held at the Eagles Place Hotel and discussed the value of SSS membership and updates on its programs and services.
In the same forum, Antique District Representative Antonio B. Legarda Jr. and Senator Loren B. Legarda pledged to subsidize the one-month SSS contributions of nearly 4,720 barangay officials of Antique amounting to P2.6 million.