More than 100 Filipino group leaders across Saudi Arabia will spearhead a new push to enroll overseas workers into the country’s pension system, under a partnership the Social Security System sealed with the OFW Council of Leaders on 22 June 2026.
The Memorandum of Understanding tasks these community leaders with persuading migrant workers to sign up as SSS members, a move designed to extend social protection not only to the workers themselves but to the families depending on them back home.
SSS Vice President for Asia, Americas and Pacific Operations Division Paul Erik D. Manalo, who headed the signing alongside OFW Council of Leaders Director-General Mofiedah R. Daknash, framed the agreement as a first of its kind. According to him, no other Filipino community network in the Middle East had previously committed to a formal arrangement with the SSS to carry its programs and services to overseas workers.
The signing forms part of a wider campaign by the pension agency to deepen its reach among Filipinos employed across the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia accounts for one of the largest populations of OFWs.
Joining the two principal signatories were OFW Council of Leaders Member Ruby Dizon and several SSS officials: Acting Executive Vice President for Branch Operations Sector Antonio S. Argabioso, Acting Vice President for Middle East and Europe Operations Division Roberto V. Roldan, and Overseas Filipino Workers Management Department Manager III Francis Paolo P. Lazaro.
Through the network of leaders mobilized by the deal, the SSS expects its enrollment efforts to reach Filipino workers who might otherwise remain outside the formal coverage of the system.
