Statistics show that Vietnam’s cooperatives now have about 13 million members. In recent years, the Vietnam Social Security (VSS) and VCA have paid attention to urging workers in cooperatives to join social and health insurance. Accordingly, both sides hold seminars and dialogues each year with workers, officials of cooperatives and farmers to raise their awareness of the rights and interests when joining social and health care insurance.

However, only about one quarter of cooperatives registered the participation in compulsory social and health insurance for workers. The number of cooperative members joining compulsory social and health insurance is low while the number of voluntary social insurance participants is limited. It is partly due to small-scale operations of cooperatives that fail to create a sustainable value chain. Though the country is home to 20,767 cooperatives, only about 30 percent of them operate effectively while the average monthly income of cooperative members is around 1.76 million VND – 4 million VND each. A number of cooperatives suspended operations or worked perfunctorily due to the lack of fund to pay social and health insurance premiums for paid officials and workers.

On the other hand, many cooperatives employ elderly workers who tend not to join social insurance. Meanwhile, young workers only heed immediate interests because of their unstable jobs so that they are yet to join social insurance. Notably, cooperatives and cooperative alliances tend to use seasonal workers who are paid daily and do not want to be bound by labour contracts, leading to social and health insurance coverage yet to match potential. 

“Gap” in social and health care insurance coverage in cooperatives remains big, not only affecting workers’ rights to joining and enjoying insurance entitlements but also failing to tap their dedication to the development of cooperatives. In order to fully narrow such gap, the VSS asked its municipal and provincial chapters to pool support of local authorities and make a list of cooperatives, their businesses and cooperative alliances to launch awareness campaigns. 

Such measures are expected to expand social and health insurance coverage in cooperatives, thereby ensuring workers’ interests, contributing to achieving social and health insurance coverage for all people./.

The country is home to over 20,000 cooperatives, 50 cooperative alliances and nearly 100,000 working groups. In the first half of this year, there were 895 newly-established cooperatives and 220 dissolved ones. The number of cooperative members reaches 6.5 million and others in economic sector are about 13 million, but only over 3 million joining social and health care insurance. The remaining 10 million are potential members of voluntary social insurance scheme./.