ENCOURAGED by the Supreme Court decision upholding the right of the Social Security System (SSS) to take legal action against employers who have been remiss in settling their contribution delinquencies, SSS President and Chief Executive Officer Rolando Ledesma Macasaet ordered an increase in the frequency of its Run After Contribution Evaders (RACE) campaign nationwide.
“Our RACE campaign must be working,” Macasaet said as he reported that the amount of unremitted members’ contributions from delinquent employers have plummeted by almost 40 percent in 2023.
Macasaet said that uncollected contributions in 2022 stood at P92 billion, but SSS successfully brought it down by 39 percent to P56 billion in 2023 on the back of aggressively pursuing delinquent employers and continuously updating employer records.
In 2022, the Commission on Audit (COA) called out the SSS for failing to collect over P92 billion from half a million delinquent employers. According to state auditors, 466,881 employers did not remit P92.49 billion in premium contributions, penalties, and damages.
Macasaet said the SSS has filed cases in court against 2,422 errant employers, majority of which have opted to settle their delinquencies either through full payment or via installment schemes, resulting in a record-high collection P1.37 billion in 2023 from P1.15 billion in 2022.
Collection from Delinquent Employers
The SSS chief explained that the decrease in unremitted contributions could be attributed to the high collection of delinquencies from employers not remitting their employees’ contributions.
Macasaet also explained that the RACE campaign is one of the programs that played a vital role in pursuing delinquent employers nationwide.
He said that RACE was an operation conducted by the state fund to ensure that employers comply with their obligation as stipulated in Republic Act No. 11199, or the Social Security Act of 2018.
He said that only selected SSS branch offices conducted RACE campaigns in previous years. Recently, Macasaet said, he ordered the SSS to beef up the initiative by requiring all SSS branch offices nationwide to carry out RACE campaigns in their respective areas.
He added that in 2023, SSS conducted 587 RACE operations nationwide and issued written notices to 4,923 delinquent employers.
Updating Employers’ List
Aside from improved collection from delinquent employers, Macasaet said that SSS also updated its records since it discovered that many of the reported contribution collectibles were from establishments that no longer operated, resulting in overstated statements of accounts (SOAs) being issued by SSS.
He added that SSS account officers and branch personnel visually inspected the establishments and discovered that many of these businesses had ceased operations./PN
