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Insurance for work injury

Labourers usually face many accidents in their workplaces that may lead for their injuries resulted in their partial or complete paralyses or even death. Law of social insurance no. 79 of 1975 guarantees labourers’ rights during work injuries that it stipulates presenting compensation for the wage, necessary medical care throughout treatment period in the hospital. Moreover, the general department for health insurance provides the injured labourer with the rehabilitation services applying the decision of the minister of health no. 414 of 1976.
Compensation of work injury: It is for labourer’s injury during or because of his work. It may be:
1. Infection with some of vocational diseases as poisoning with lead, mercury, arsenic, etc. the table of diseases is always updated to comprise all possible diseases occurred during work.
2. Labourer’s injury according to occurrence of accident through time and place of work.
3. Labourers’ injury because of his wok even it isn’t occurred in the place or time of work.
4. Sickness because of great exhaustion and stress because of work. It is determined by the law as (infection of diseases related to arteries, heart or brain of insured labourers before pension age).
5. Injury of insured labourer during his coming and going to the workplace. It is conditioned that the labourer goes though the normal way coding with the time of beginning/finishing the work. There is critical mistake that this time is determined with one hour after/before the work although it has to be determined according to the distance between the workplace and labourer’s house.
First: labourer’s commitment in the case of his injury - If the labourer (insured) is injured in the workplace, he has to inform the business owner or his representatives.
- If the labourer is injured in his way to/from the work, he has to inform the nearest police station to register the number and date of the minute of his injury.
- The labourer has to inform the business owner with the injury (number and date of the police minute).
- The business owner has to apply his commitments towards the injured labourer or the labourer will have the right to call the specialized institution to achieve the necessary procedures.
Second: commitments of the business owner
- Issuing injury report under supervision of the specialized department.
- Transferring the insured labourer for the specialized treatment department.
- If the labourer works for a governmental institution or public works sector, the business owner has to issue administrative investigation. But if the labourer works in the private sector, the business owner has to inform the police about the accident place by 48 hours of absence date.
- The specialized department or the police achieve an investigation through which they listen to:
A. Witness of the injured labourer
B. Witness of business owner or his representative
C. Witnesses of people seeing the accident
D. The accident details
E. Examining if the accident occurred because of negligence or naughty behaviour of the injured?
Financial rights of the labourer during his treatment:
The (insured) injured labourer has financial rights throughout his treatment as follows:
First: compensation of wage
- If the injury prevents the labourer to continue working, the specialized department (the government and the public sector for labourers working in it or social affairs for labourers in the private sector) gives him a compensation of wage that equals 100% of the wage paid regularly.
- Paying this compensation continues along the injury vacation, permanent incapacitate or death. The compensation is paid with the following date of the accident; moreover, the labourer receives a compensation for weekly vacations.
Second: transportation expenses
- The business owner has to transfer the injured to the treatment place in the case of injury occurrence.
- The specialized department should pay for transportation expenses (public transportation) if the injured receives a medical treatment outside the city that he lives in. if the physician decides the critical health condition of the injured that doesn’t allow him to make use of the public transportation so the department should afford for expenses of private transportation.
Financial rights of the labourer after his medical treatment: The labourer’s injury may be ended without any disability; on the contrary, it may end with partial/complete handicap or even death. The financial rights are determined according to the injury outputs (disability or death) as follows:
- If the labourer is completely treated, he has no financial rights.
- If the injury leads to his permanent complete disability, he will receive a monthly pension (80% of the monthly average of the wages for which the subscription of insurance is paid). About the changeable wage, it is calculated through the monthly average of the wages (with 50% as a minimum rate for the pension values after 1/7/1978). About the pension, it is increased 5% per five years until the age of sixty.
- If the injury leads to permanent partial disability (35% or more), the insured labourer receives a pension either he continues in his work or leaves it that equals the percentage of this disability from the full pension (the full pension X the percentage of disability).
- If the injury leads to permanent partial disability (35% or more) and it prevents him to continue working, the labourer has to prove that he has no alternative work opportunity that codes with his injury that obliges the business owner to increase the pension 5% per five years.
- If the injury leads to complete disability (less than 35%), the insured labourer receive one-bloc compensation (percentage of disability X full pension X 48 months)
Repetition of injury:
If the injured labourer faced a previous injury before his recent injury, there will be other rules as follows:
- If the total percentage of the previous and recent injuries is less than 35%, he will be compensated for the recent injury only.
- If the total percentage of the two injuries is more than 35%, his pension will be calculated according to total percentage of his disability and the average wage of the recent injury with more concern that the new pension will not be less than the previous pension.
Repetition of medical examination of the injured:
- The injured labourer, the insurance institution or treatment department has the right to ask for repeating the medical examination once per six months throughout the first year and once a year during the following three years.
- The right to call for repeating the medical examination is deleted after four months of the date of injury.
- The rights of the labourer are readjusted according to the results of the re-examination.
Dear my brother and sister:
If you face work injury - GOD bless you - and you have specific disability, then you have the right to be re-examined to check the percentage of your disability. But be aware that this right is deleted after four months of the injury date.
Combination of injury pension and other rights:
The injured labourer has the right to combine the injury pension and other rights as follows:
- The labourer could combine his injury pension and wage with no limitation.
- The labourer could combine his injury pension and unemployment compensation with no limitation.
- If the injury prevents him to continue working, he could combine the injury pension, disability and death pension.
- The combination of pensions is limited with the last wage that he receive (for both main and changeable wages)
Cases of deprivation of compensation:
- If the insured labourer injures himself on purpose.
- If the injury is occurred as a result of naughty behaviour [under impact of drugs or alcohol - violation of protection instructions hanged in obvious place in the workplace]
All this is applied if the injury doesn’t lead to death or permanent disability (more than 35%) of the insured labourer. These cases couldn’t be applied without achieving accurate investigation.