Illustration: Internet 

In May 2020, the VSS and the Vietnam Post Office jointly held a ceremony to kick off the ‘social security for all’ campaign, which was livestreamed in all 63 provinces and cities nationwide.

As many as 708 teams paraded on streets of every district across the nation to promote the campaign. They also organised face-to-face consultations with people in densely-populated areas, crowded markets and wholesale markets to expand the network of voluntary social insurance and household health insurance participants.

Employees of VSS and Post Office staff went to central markets, residential areas and households to disseminate information, policies and encouraged people to participate in the insurance scheme.

As a result, in the first month since the campaign was launched, as many as 24,704 people voluntarily joined the social security scheme. Seventeen provinces and cities encouraged more than 500 people to join.

Many other localities developed a strong network of thousands of households joining health insurance.

Learning from experience of the campaign in May last year, on the occasion of Vietnam Healthcare Insurance Day (July 1, 2020), the VSS and Vietnam Post Office continued to launch the second ‘social security and health insurance for all’ campaign.

On two days of the campaign (July 11 and 12, 2020), as many as 30,269 people voluntarily joined social insurance and 58,803 people participated in household health insurance.

Positive results were recorded from the efforts of localities.

For example, five localities – Thanh Hoa, Tien Giang, Binn Duong, Long An and HCM City – saw 1,000 to 2,000 people voluntarily joining social insurance.

Nineteen provinces and cities developed a network of 500 participants.

HCM City, Ben Tre, Binh Duong, Can Tho, Soc Trang, Thanh Hoa and Tien Giang encouraged 2,000 to 10,000 people to join household health insurance.

In total, the two campaigns called on 62,522 new members to voluntarily join the social security scheme and 71,300 new members to join the household health insurance scheme.

The number of people who applied for voluntary social insurance equaled 312 per cent compared to the total figure of the whole of 2017 and 118 per cent compared to 2018.

Information about two ‘social security for all’ campaigns were reported widely on mass media.

Illustration: Internet 

Spreading further among the community

In the first year implementing the Prime Minister’s master plan to comprehensively renovate contents, forms and methods to disseminate information on social insurance, the launching of the two campaigns created a strong impact on the whole society in terms of benefits and humane meanings of social insurance and health insurance policies.

The effect is clearly shown in the number of people mobilised to participate in voluntary social insurance and household health insurance. Lessons learned in 2020 created an important foundation for the entire sector to effectively organise this year’s month of campaigning for the implementation of universal social insurance.

The Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) issued a plan to promote social insurance participation until 2025, including a plan to launch the campaign month.

MOLISA is responsible for building a communication plan for the campaign while VSS is in charge of working with other relevant units to organise conferences, workshops and communication events.

Since early 2021 when COVID-19 was still evolving, the VSS started to build a communication plan which required local social security agencies to launch communication campaigns during the action month, focusing on humane meaning, values and benefits of joining social insurance and risks of not joining.

The communication theme of this year is ‘Social Security for All’ with various forms of communication like social insurance banners, slogans on main roads where there are many people passing by, and at the headquarters of social insurance agencies at all levels.

VSS will coordinate with local news agencies to publish news articles, reportages, columns, radio stories to disseminate information about social insurance records, strengthen communication on the loudspeaker system with a focus on voluntary social insurance.

The VSS will also direct provincial and municipal social security agencies to proactively deploy communication activities in accordance with practical situation of COVID-19 in their areas and observe COVID-19 prevention protocols.

Based on the specific situation, the VSS will issue documents to give guidance on the organisation of the campaign’s launching ceremony at an appropriate time.

COVID-19, which directly affects the communication work, is both a challenge and a favorable condition for the entire sector to implement the assigned tasks, especially when people are aware of the role of social insurance and health insurance policies. Along with the lessons learned and bright spots of 2020, the month campaigning for universal social security will be implemented in a more proactive and effective manner./.