The Agency for Social Insurance and Pensions (ASIP) together with the European Union-financed Project, Technical Assistance to Support Pension Reform in Tajikistan, yesterday held the second in a series of four, week-long Training of Trainers (ToT) workshops for district office (DO) employees.
According to the European Union (EU) Delegation to Tajikistan, the workshops cover legislative and regulatory provisions and reporting requirements of the social insurance program for specialists from all 68 district offices throughout the country.
This week, 42 DO program specialists arrived at the ASIP headquarters in Dushanbe chiefly from the Sughd and Khatlon provinces. Approximately 146 DO specialist trainers will take the course over the next 5-6 months.
The workshops were opened by Ms. Nazokat Odinazoda, First Deputy Director of the Agency and by Mr. Francesco Straniero, Attaché and Program Manager, EU Delegation to Tajikistan. In her remarks, Ms. Odinazoda welcomed the participants and stressed the importance of their knowledge of the law and their learning throughout this week. Mr. Straniero said that the EU has partnered with the Agency for more than 10 years and strongly supports capacity development and training workshops such as this one. He said that strong pension and social insurance programs support further economic and human development in Tajikistan and this is the reason that this EU-financed Project is an important part of the Human Development Support Program II signed in 2014 by Tajikistan and the EU.
The series of training workshops will continue in August and September. The Agency initiated the series to ensure that a cadre of specialists have particular expertise in the operations of the social insurance and pension program and can instruct others at the district office level in the correct operations. The DOs have authority for recording worker and pensioner data and information, reviewing personal files, calculating program benefits, granting benefits and authorizing payments for all beneficiaries of the program. They must have a high level of expertise to answer pensioner and other beneficiary questions accurately and ensure that the beneficiaries are being treated fairly according to the law and regulations concerning their qualifications as a result of making life-long contributions to the program and working for the required time to earn a benefit.
The week-long workshops will be instructed by experts at Agency Headquarters who also will be available throughout the week to answer questions and conduct discussions. The trainers will receive refresher course materials and further training on legislative, regulatory, budgetary, accounting and auditing topics.
This training is part of a broad range of capacity development activities that the Project has worked closely with the Agency in implementing. A series of introductory and advanced level courses in actuarial science has been underway in association with Tajikistan National University over the past year and will continue during the current year. Also, following on the Project’s development of an Agency electronic record-keeping and program administration system, the partnership of the Agency and Project is training specialists in migrating data and information from the legacy records system to a new Agency Management Information System (MIS) that is being tested in the field currently. The new ASIP MIS is being field tested in two pilot district offices of Varzob and Hisor and could be rolled out in the country as early as next year. Training for employers and users of the system will be initiated within the next several months on a scheduled roll-out basis.
