Yesterday the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) released the results of its audit of the five government funds under the control of the Labor Ministry. The "Employment Insurance Fund" and "Industrial Accident Insurance Fund" were given particular scrutiny. BAI said that the employment insurance fund has been collecting too much in fees and is therefore a burden to workers and companies. It collects around W1 trillion a year and as a result had W8.5 trillion at the end of 2004. That is 3.6 times its expenditures for last year. The industrial accident insurance fund has been ignoring the so-called "nylon patients" and letting go of too much of its money. Some 23 percent of industrial accident patients are long-term patients with that status for more than two years, so that is hard to understand.
The problems brought up by BAI are not new. The media has mentioned them countless times. The problems still have not really been fixed, and the Labor Ministry is deserving of criticism. The money is like tax money, taken from workers or companies. It is a serious problem if too much is collected or if they become lax in their operations and therefore wasteful. Granted, there are aspects of the criticism that are superficial. You cannot necessarily conclude that employment insurance has accumulated a lot of funds because it collected too much. It is natural that there suddenly a large amount of funds when a program is still in its beginning stages, and part of the reason is that unemployment allowances are far less than advanced nations and so spending was low. The simple comparison of that industrial accident patients have that status far longer compared to health insurance recipients is also a problem. Still, it would be hard to deny that the management of that fund was careless.
Though late in coming the Labor Ministry has the right attitude for recognizing the problems and pledging to fix them. It must not just go through the motions or just patch things up. The funds under its control are programs designed to provide for the welfare and stability of the livelihoods of workers, and as such they should be put to more active use. That would be a bigger burden for the people, and so if they are not managed transparently the anger will be second only to that expressed in tax resistance.
The Hankyoreh, 9 June 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] Irresponsible Management of Labor Funds |
