Striving Towards Transparency in Annual S.S.B. Connect

Today, the Social Security Board hosted its annual S.S.B. Connect-Public Forum in Belize City, where stakeholders and members of the board gather to discuss issues and plans for improvement. This year, the S.S.B. is working to strengthen bonds with stakeholders and improve operations to better fit its demographic. News Five’s Britney Gordon has the details. 

 

Deborah Ruiz, C.E.O., S.S.B.

“Our annual Social Security Connect, which is a public forum where we report on the operations activities and the actuarial assessment and review done by the actuary. I think it’s important for transparency because it gives the opportunity for our stakeholders to be aware of what are the challenges, what are the successes, and what are the innovative strategies that would be taken by the board moving forward to further develop a program content and hear from our stakeholders what changes they want to see done to the social security program.”

 

Britney Gordon, Reporting

The S.S.B. Connect Forum provides an opportunity for stakeholders to discuss any concerns they may have regarding the operations of the Board, but it is also a platform for the SSB to highlight the successes and progress made over the past year. We spoke to the S.S.B.’s outgoing C.E.O., Deborah Ruiz.

 

Deborah Ruiz

“In terms of operations, we will be looking more at, as you indicated, what our online platform is. It’s not going as fast as we would like, because, we’re dealing with a vast forty-two years of data that we have to clean up and make sure that when it’s online, because shortly customers will be able to see their contribution payments. And then we are working on deploying the benefits module. The sickness benefit will be the first one coming online shortly. So persons have the opportunity to file their medical claims online. We will have an employee in the medical portal where the medical providers are able to do the medical certificates online. Full transparency in terms of the process of how long your claim will take from the time you submit it to the time the payment is in your bank account. So that, that is a big change for us from where we started with a manual process.”

 

The attendance of stakeholders is key to the success of the forum. Director of Education at the National Trade Union Congress of Belize, Trisha Perez, says that the N.T.U.C.B.’s participation underscored the union’s desire to represent and protect workers in Belize.

 

Trisha Perez, Education Director, N.T.U.C.B.

“We were invited to join in the S.S.B. Connect today. What we’ve been doing over the last few years, we’ve been participating with the social protection floor and to see how best we could increase social protection coverage for all workers in Belize along with the rest of the society.”

 

 

 

Attending for the first time this year is the president of the Christian Workers Union, Leonora Flowers. She said that the union recognises the progress and achievements of S.S.B., and the union continues to work in tandem for the betterment of the country.

 

 

 

Leonora Flowers, President, C.W.U.

“My presence today is to celebrate, of course, the good reviews that S.S.B. is getting. Being from the union, it doesn’t mean that we don’t know that there are very good things happening there. And so we are here. I am here particularly first time at the S.S.B. Connect to celebrate the good reviews that’s happening.”

 

 

Britney Gordon for News Five.