JEDDAH, 26 June 2006 — Schools are closed for the summer, but some teachers are discovering that social security payments from their salaries are being deducted but not ending up in their state pension program. These educators are often forced to resign before the summer vacation so that schools save money by not paying their summer salaries.
By law, when employers make transitions from internships to full time they are supposed to be issued social security information. So some teachers are not only being asked to resign before the summer break, but are also learning that their social security deductions were never applied to their state pension accounts.
This is what happened to Sarah Al-Zahrani, a 24-year-old Islamic Studies teacher at a Jeddah secondary school. She said that she was forced to resign from a teaching job at a school. When she went to teach the following year at another school, she was asked for social security information from her previous employment.
It was only then that she learned her own lesson on the Kingdom’s social security system. The previous school deducted social security payments from her salary which never made it into her state pension program. An administrator at the new school approached the previous school’s administration trying to determine what happened to Al-Zahrani’s social security payments, but to no avail.
“They told me that I will never get that money and that nothing can be done about it,” she said.
All employers are required to issue the social security number for their full-time Saudi employees, including public schools. The employer pays half of the social security payments to the state while the employee pays the other half in the form of salary deductions. But some employers are simply deducting the payments from the salaries of part-time teachers and interns.
Many of those who don’t pay attention to their social security status are discovering that deductions are being made on their behalf but not being applied to their state pension account. This results in lower monthly social security payments later in life.
Teachers new to the field are the ones who are most adversely affected because their first jobs are typically part-time and they aren’t aware of how the social security system works.
According to the Ministry of Labor, teachers should be assigned social security numbers after singing contracts. Typically, teachers start with a three-month internship and then sign a contract.
According to law consultant Gehan Gurban, these teachers must be aware of their rights so they can benefit from it and help others, too. “These teachers need to be taught about the system,” she said.
