LABOR: Workers Representatives Warn New Welfare Ministry against Using Social Security Insurance Fund

Labor activists warned welfare minister against spending the resources of the workers social security insurance fund, which has 26 million paying members, for the projects of his new ministry. July 26, 2004 - In a letter to the new welfare and social security minister, the association of Islamic labor councils said the ministry should refrain from spending the social security funds and occupying the buildings and other properties owned by the social security fund, secretary of the association Hossein Sadeqi tells Radio Farda’s broadcaster Fereydoun Zarnegar. “The resources of the new welfare ministry should come from public treasury, not a private fund,” he says, criticizing the reported plan to pay for the new welfare ministry’s program from the social security insurance fund, which collects contributions from workers and employers,” he says. “The labor circles are concerned that the new ministry is being established by exploiting a fund which belongs to the nation’s poorest classes, he added. The new ministry, which was established by a Majlas act last month has no budget of its own. “We don’t have a line item in the current fiscal year’s budget for something called the ministry of welfare and social security,” he says. “We fear that the government may decide to use the social security insurance fund to pay for the new ministry.” “Welfare minister Hossein Sharifzadegan told me that using the social security fund, since it belongs to the workers who paid into it, would be a religious taboo,” he says. “We are glad that he thinks he cannot use an insurance fund that belongs to 26 million workers.”