The state-owned Social Security System (SSS) has secured twin arrangements from its counterparts in Germany and Japan that benefit close to a quarter of a million overseas Filipino workers (OFW) by extending the itinerant workforce with social security benefits not normally available to them.

SSS President and CEO Emmanuel F. Dooc said the bilateral agreements eliminated the usual nationality- and territory-based restrictions on the social security benefits of foreign workers in the two countries that now cloak some 230,000 OFW in their territories with retirement, disability and death benefits denied them previously.

“The Philippines, with SSS in the lead, now has social security agreements (SSA) with Germany and Japan effective June 1 and August 1 of this year, respectively, ensuring the protection of social security rights for more than 230,000 Filipinos abroad,” Dooc said.

With the SSA, the migrant Filipino workers in Germany and Japan enjoy social security protection upon retirement, disability or death as envisioned in the 1962 International Labor Organization Social Security Convention Number 118 on equality of treatment, as well as the 1982 ILO Social Security Convention Number 157 on the maintenance of social security rights.

The cited global labor conventions promoted equality of treatment, export of benefits, totalization of insurance periods and the mutual administrative assistance for migrant workers wherever they are found.

“With the bilateral SSA in place, Filipinos are now entitled to social security benefits under the same conditions applicable to nationals of Germany and Japan and we are looking forward to extend the same protection to more Filipinos working or residing abroad,” Dooc said.