Representatives from the sugar millers sector in Negros Occidental were introduced yesterday to the guidelines of the Employees' Compensation Program designed to provide benefits to work-related contingencies for both public and private workers.

Vicente Castro, deputy director of PSMA, said the ECP is "very relevant" to the sugar industry because compensation for work-related sickness or injury has always been a source of debate between employees, management and health personnel.

The seminar at a Bacolod hotel yesterday was attended by safety, human resource, and union officers from various sugar mills.

The ECP, being implemented by the Employees' Compensation Program, covers employees in the formal sector who are registered members of the Government Service Insurance System and the Social Security System.

Alicia Borres, ECC information officer, said the benefits provided under the ECP are given on top of the employee's claims from the GSIS or SSS and PhilHealth. She said the ECP is a non-contributing benefit scheme, which means that nothing is being deducted from a worker's salary to enable him/her to avail of the ECC benefits.

However, self-employed, voluntary, and land-based overseas Filipino workers are not entitled to ECC claims.

Any work-connected sickness, injury or death shall be compensated under the ECP, and benefits provided include loss of income benefit, medical benefit, rehabilitation services, carer's allowance, and death benefits.

For private sector employees, claims can be filed with the SSS, and for government workers, with the GSIS. Borres said the ECC wants qualified employees to know that they can file ECC claims because their agency has a zero awareness in Visayas and Mindanao despite their 32-year existence. Since 1975, three million workers have already availed of ECC benefits, she said.*NLG

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