STATE-RUN Social Security System plans to double the cases filed against employers who fail to remit the contributions of their workers.
“We expect to double the cases we are filing this second semester since historically, there are more employers who become delinquent during the second half of the year,” Santiago Agdeppa, SSS assistant vice president for operations and legal department, told reporters.
“So from 518 cases last semester, we will file more or less a thousand cases within this semester,” he said.
Of the employers charged in the first six months of the year, 11 already settled their arrears and were absolved from criminal and civil proceedings, Agdeppa said.
He said the pension fund has outstanding collectibles of P236 million from the cases pending before the courts.
At end-June, the pension fund recovered P181 million from employers who settled their arrears from extra-judicial demands and court orders.
Earlier, SSS said it would file at least six cases a month. So far, it has filed an average of 86 cases a month.
“So far, there are no big companies involved since these are the employers that generally remit their employees’ contributions on time. The problem is on the small and medium size enterprises,” Agdeppa said.
“We have sustained convictions that are as small as P100,000,” he added.
The SSS Act of 1997 provides that any employer who, after deducting the monthly contributions or loan amortizations from their employee’s compensation, fails to remit the said deduction to the SSS within 30 days from the date they became due, shall be presumed to have misappropriated such contributions or loan amortizations and shall suffer an imprisonment of six years, penalty or both.
