A report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) says that no legislative changes are needed to comply with Convention 102 on social security in relation to medical care, as well as cash benefits for illness, family, maternity and disability.
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This concludes a mission by the organization, which analyzed the Colombian social security system and gave a series of recommendations for the pension reform that the Government wants to present on March 16.
These suggestions will be presented today to the tripartite subcommittee, that is to say, to the production unions, the labor unions and the government entities that are building the bill.
The ILO recommendations are divided into general and specific.
These are the recommendations given by the body at a systemic level:
• The ILO says that it is necessary to reform the general pension system to respond to structural challenges, including competition and inequity between the two subsystems (Medium Premium Regime (RPM) and the Individual Savings with Solidarity Regime (Rais)as well as the necessary financing to sustain the minimum pension.
In addition, since the reform must take into account the constitutional principles of efficiency, universality, sufficiency, and responsibility of the State in the coordination and direction of social security.
In this context, they say that technical assistance from the ILO is available to support the Government and the social partners in the formulation of reform options appropriate to the national context, based on the comparative practice of systems compatible with international norms regarding social Security.
Bearing in mind that, in practice, two of the three pension modalities currently available to Rais affiliates (programmed withdrawal and programmed withdrawal without pension bonus negotiation) do not comply with the principles related to periodic readjustment and predictability of benefits -except in the case of pensions whose amount is equal to the minimum wage-, it is recommended to review the design of the pension system in order to guarantee, both in law and in practice, that all protected persons, regardless of type of pension chosen and the amount of the pension granted, they will be entitled to receive a foreseeable benefit and to maintain the purchasing power of their pensions.
These are the specific recommendations:
• Establish mechanisms that make it possible to guarantee that all protected persons who, upon reaching retirement age, will have at least 15 years of contributions and do not meet the qualifying conditions prescribed to be entitled to a pension (1,300 weeks of contributions in the RPM or 1 150 weeks in the Rais), will receive reduced periodic interruption for life, instead of a one-time capital paid (substitute compensation in the RPM or refund of balances in the Rais).
• Establish mechanisms that allow the administrative institutions to guarantee that the protected persons will use the compensation in a reasonable manner in case of partial permanent disability.
• The provisions of national legislation that condition the recognition of the survivor’s pension to the satisfaction of a minimum period of cohabitation of at least five years immediately prior to the death of the pensioner (and affiliate according to jurisprudence) could be reviewed, so that the minimum period of cohabitation is not required when the contingency is of labor origin.
