Pensioners describe lives held hostage by insurance agency’s new digital system

Since February, Hussein* has been a regular at the insurance office. He has been returning frequently, trying to obtain a document proving he is uninsured. Without this document, he cannot complete the paperwork for the state to fund his heart surgery. Each time he goes to the insurance office, however, he is met with the same phrase: “the system is down.” The system in question is the new digital platform launched earlier this year by the National Organization for Social Insurance (NOSI) — a launch that has cut tens of thousands of people off from their primary source of income. Hussein is one of those who have been cut off, and for him, his health and life now hang in the balance, hostages to the new system. Mada Masr spoke with Hussein and other affected people to understand how the glitches in the pensions rollout over recent months have hit their lives and disrupted their homes. From knock-on difficulties accessing other state services like healthcare, which require insurance documentation, to blocked payments and fruitless visits to the insurance organization’s offices, what has emerged for many is not only a sudden suspension of their income, but an uncertain and precarious future, as they take on long and tiring journeys through the state’s bureaucracy to seek a fix that is still not forthcoming. *** The head of the National Organization for Social Insurance, Major General Gamal Awad, has said that the organization’s new digital system was put together by international companies including Microsoft and Atos at a cost of around LE240 million. The system is meant to serve around 12 million pensioners nationwide. After the launch of the system in February, several services stopped, a source at the organization previously told Mada Masr. New pension accounts could not be opened, and requests to modify or close existing ones were not being registered. Insurance documents required to access other public services also stopped being issued. Hussein, as he waits for his heart operation, is one of those who have been unable to access healthcare services without social insurance documentation. Kamel al-Sayed, the deputy head of the Pensioners Syndicate, told Mada Masr that the NOSI attempted a workaround for people who needed insurance documentation to access other public services and that it notified the General Traffic Department and the Universal Health Insurance Authority to relax the requirement that citizens obtain a digital certificate from the insurance office. But Sayed, who previously served as the head of the Central Department of Information and Documentation in the organization’s computational department, said that some local branches of the Universal Health Insurance Authority refused to implement this. Sayed also said that people who were registered with the NOSI before the activation of the new system have continued to receive their pensions normally. But that is not the case for former MP Salma Mourad, who was among those with an existing pension account before the new system was rolled out. Her pension payments were interrupted when she switched bank accounts in March, she told Mada Masr. She has been unable to update her information via the new system and has not received pension payments since. Mourad said she filed a complaint with the NOSI, which paid out a single month’s pension for the period between March and June. An official at the organization told her that the system would not be fully operational until July. But she said she is skeptical that the problems will be fixed so soon, given there seem to be so many complaints. Youssef*, a business owner who was forced to stop operating, is also wary that authorities will help him soon. After Youssef’s father died in December, he requested his late father’s remaining pension payments be redirected to himself. He received a text message from the NOSI in February informing him that his request had been approved. But since then, Youssef told Mada Masr he has not received any payment. At first, the insurance staff at his local office in Qalyubiya told him the problem would be resolved within a month. When it wasn’t, they merely told him that “the matter is out of our hands and our role ends here,” redirecting him to the postal authority which handles pension disbursement. Youssef then embarked on another round of inquiries at the post office, only to receive the same answer: “ nothing has been transferred. ” Like Mourad, he doubts that the issue will be fixed as soon as the government is claiming. “I won’t believe it until I receive a message [that I have received the payment],” he said. Khaled* has also been visiting insurance authority offices in Qalyubiya, seeking to collect his late mother’s pension payment. He has left his job as a company driver following an accident, and his only income is a pension of around LE3,000 — not enough to cover his family’s needs and the cost of his heart medication. Khaled, who is approaching 50, completed all the required procedures and received the organization’s approval to be added to the list of pension beneficiaries. His first payment was due in April. Since then, he says he has visited the insurance office “more than 10 times” to ask why his mother’s pension has yet to be deposited in his account. Each time, after long waits in crowded offices, he returned with the same answer: “the system is down.” *** While pensioners have been met with shrugs and delays by officials at the insurance authority, the government’s official timeline for when the system will be up and running has repeatedly shifted. An official at NOSI told Mada Masr in April that “the goal is to solve all the technical issues with the new system before May.” But after May passed without a fix, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbuly stated that the crisis would be resolved by August. Awad, the head of the NOSI , later claimed on the Min Maspero program that “the authority had already disbursed pensions for the months of May and June to 12 million beneficiaries,” stating that payments were made on their scheduled dates, and that June payments were even brought forward ahead of Eid al-Adha “with complete success.” He also downplayed the scale of the problem, saying the disruption was affecting “only about 45,000 new cases” that he said were first-time pension linkage requests, as a result of “the transition period and data migration from the old system to the new one” that the crisis “was on the path to a final solution within two weeks.” As criticism of the authority mounted in the leadup to Eid al-Adha, the NOSI launched a one-off LE10,000 advance for around 35,000 people affected by the disruption who had already completed all additional paperwork required to complete their service requests. But Sayed clarified that the payment did not include everyone affected by the disruption, adding that only a small subset received them and pointing to “inaccuracies in the data issued by the authority.” As of the time of writing, none of the affected individuals who spoke to Mada Masr had received their benefits. Some said that when they asked the insurance office about the LE10,000, they were told no such payment existed. Legal advisor to the Pensioners Syndicate Abdel Ghaffar al-Maghrawy told Mada Masr that the authority is required to compensate those affected for every month their benefits delayed. Sayed added that those affected must submit an official request to that effect in accordance with the law. Maghrawy and Sayed cited Article 130 of the Social Security and Pensions Law , which requires the authority to “take all necessary measures to assess insurance entitlements and disburse them within four weeks of receiving a request by the beneficiary.” “If the disbursement of the amounts due is delayed beyond the time frames indicated, the authority shall, at the request of the party concerned, pay the amounts due together with an additional sum for each month in which the disbursement is delayed,” reads the law. MP Abdel Moneim Imam submitted a briefing request on Thursday regarding compensation for those affected. This is set to be discussed at a meeting convened by the House of Representatives on June 17, with the head of the authority in attendance, to address the crisis crippling the new system, Imam told the press. *Names have been changed. The post Pensioners describe lives held hostage by insurance agency’s new digital system first appeared on Mada Masr .