MANILA, Philippines — The Social Security System (SSS) is targeting to raise membership of 50 to 70 percent of overseas contract workers (OCWs) in five years as this sector has the potential to generate potentially a huge P4.68 billion for the pension fund monthly.

SSS has just started an aggressive program to raise membership from Filipinos abroad that are considered “contractual” or OCWs.

“Along with creation of offices (abroad), our other plan is to increase coverage of OCWs. We hope to increase actively paying OCW to 500,000 this year,” said SSS Senior Vice President Judy Frances A. See. Present membership is only at 200,000.

Contractual employees are the group of Filipinos that are exposed to most risk since their compensation and benefits end immediately once their contract ends. And SSS believes they should be the immediate target beneficiaries more than other Filipino workers abroad that are already immigrants.

For 2012, SSS targets a P3.1-billion collection revenue from OCWs, a P1.1 billion increase from 2011.

However, See explained the potential revenue from OCW is really huge estimated at P4.68 billion at a monthly contribution rate of 10.4 percent for an estimated 4.5 million OCWs at a monthly salary of P10,000.

The problem, though, is SSS does not have a control over OCWs’ employers. This is why it is campaigning for membership through its “Member Get Member” program, establishment of offices abroad, and by entering in bilateral agreements with foreign governments.

In its expansion of offices, SSS is reopening an office in Dubai and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

“We can be reached through the internet, and we have a 24-7 call center, but it’s always different if you have somebody to talk to personally,” said SSS President Emilio S. De Quiros Jr.

And while membership of OCWs with SSS is still generally voluntary compared to the mandated membership of all employees in the local setting, it is imposing a mandated membership of seafarers. It has control over manning agents of seamen which have offices here.

It already has a memorandum of agreement with the Department of Labor and Employment. This allows it to impose sanctions on manning agencies that will not enlist with SSS and pay for the premium of their contractual seamen, See said.

In 2011, SSS already entered into bilateral agreements with Denmark and Japan. It plans to expand the number of countries in 2012. The bilateral agreement allows four provisions.

These are equality of treatment — whatever treatment to other foreign workers in a country should be accorded to OCWs; export of benefits — a benefit of a Filipino OCW should be remitted to the Philippines once his contract expires; totalization or a benefit should be granted to an OCW pro rata for the period of time for which he has rendered service even if he has not completed a pre-agreed period of entitlement; and mutual administrative assistance (MAA).

MAA means an OCW does not have to go home to his home country in order to enjoy his benefit.

SSS already has existing bilateral agreements with the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, the independent province of Quebec, and Switzerland.

While there are many OCWs in the Middle East, See said SSS could not at once enter into a bilateral agreement with countries there since there should be uniformity of security system between the two countries.

“We should have a compatibility of schemes to have the possibility of agreement. We can’t just have a bilateral agreement with a country that has a provident fund system which is not compatible with our social insurance system,” she said.

Provident funds provide for a defined contribution for an individual member, and under which a member’s payment is normally not used to subsidize for another member’s social security benefit. In the Philippines, the social insurance system allows for a subsidy scheme of higher income members in favor of lower-income members.