JEDDAH, 2 May 2005 — In a significant first, the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry signed a deal with Bank Al-Jazira to provide life insurance for its employees.
As per the agreement, JCCI employees will get 36 months’ salary in case of death or disability, with a maximum coverage of SR700,000 and a minimum of SR70,000.
Mohammed Al-Shareef, secretary-general of JCCI, said the coverage would vary from employee to employee depending on their salary scale.
The agreement, which was signed at the JCCI headquarters on Saturday, was based on Al-Jazira’s cooperative takaful insurance program. Employees suffering from permanent partial disability after losing sight or limbs will receive 100 percent coverage while 25 percent coverage will be given for losing a finger, Al-Shareef said.
“These benefits will be added to what an employee is entitled to get as per the Social Insurance Scheme when facing similar situations,” the secretary-general said.
“The chamber will bear all financial expenses incurred by the new life insurance policy. The facility is one of the special privileges for our employees,” Al-Shareef told Arab News.
JCCI also provides full medical insurance coverage to all its employees and their families as part of its efforts to provide a secure working environment.
The JCCI move follows a government decision, making medical insurance mandatory for expatriate workers to receive or renew their iqamas (resident permits).
The new law will be applied initially to companies having 500 or more employees. Maj. Gen. Salim Al-Belaihed, director general of the Passports Department, has already discussed the matter with Dr. Rashid Suleiman Al-Rashid, secretary-general of the Cooperative Health Insurance Council.
As per the council’s statistics, the decision will be applied in the first stage to one million expatriate workers in the country.
“I had discussed with Al-Belaihed the mechanism to implement the scheme on companies having 500 or more workers,” Al-Rashid said. The new law will come into effect on June 1 when the first phase of the cooperative health insurance scheme is implemented on expatriates.
The scheme will be implemented in three phases. The second phase will involve companies with a non-Saudi workforce of 100 to 500 and the third stage will have companies with a foreign work force of less than 100.
Al-Rashid said the scheme would be implemented for Saudis working in private companies and agencies within two years. “The ministry, in association with the World Bank, is studying the prospects of implementing the scheme on the rest of the citizens,” he pointed out.
Al-Rashid said insurance policies under the new scheme would be left open to employers and insurance companies to arrive at a suitable decision as per the free market policy followed by the Kingdom.
However, he pointed out that a unified policy would be implemented all over the Kingdom. He said 14 insurance companies including the newly licensed 13 firms would provide the service. The Saudi insurance market is set to cross SR15 billion within the next four years as a result of growing car and medical insurance policies.