by Rod Hughes
The Social Security Administration (Caja) estimates that some 73% of construction workers in Guanacaste province are without insurance for health, accident and death. The reason given for contractors getting away without paying compulsary insurance is a lack of inspectors.
The Caja not only administers all public hospitals but is charged with providing retirement pensions and in treating injured persons not covered by the National Insurance Institute (INS), another government agency. The Caja recently has begun cracking down but the building boom in the northwestern province, especially hotels, resorts and vacation homes, swamped the Caja’s personnel.
To cover the entire country, the Caja only had 280 inspectors but this will change as the institution adds more, according to chief financial officer Manuel Ugarte.
What this means to those who finance their own construction is that, to be safe, employers must take care that sub-contractors enroll their workers for Social Security benefits. The Caja has the power to shut down a business for non-payment.
To be fair, some contractors have obtained INS insurance against on-the-job accidents, preferring the faster service INS provides, cutting down on the time a worker must be absent from his job for medical reasons. But this provides no legal excuse not to pay into the Caja because the payment also builds retirement pensions.
The Caja found the lack by comparing its income from the province to the number of construction permits obtained from the Municipalities and estimating the number of workers needed.
But not all the new inspectors–some 50 more will be hired next year–will be dedicated to construction activities. The number of uninsured farm workers is astonomical, according to Ugarte.
To illustrate the building boom, Guanacaste’s Santa Cruz canton (county) alone accounted for 9% of the nation’s total construction in the past 12 months, increasing during that time 131% comparied with the year before. The canton’s alcalde, (the equivalent of a country judge in some U.S. states) Jorge Chavarria, is studying a plan to make worker insurance a prerequisite in granting a building permit, according to the daily newspaperm La Nacion.