Q&A – Mohamad Karaki

The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) is Lebanon’s main social security program and the country’s largest insurance provider, covering approximately 30 percent of the population. Famed for its endless queues, appalling delayed payments and highly underdeveloped services — requests for this interview were required to be sent by fax machine — ‘daman’, as it is commonly known in Lebanon, provides healthcare, family allowance and end-of-service indemnity (EOSI) to 1.3 million Lebanese citizens. To discuss the issues faced by the daman, Executive sat with Mohamad Karaki, the NSSF’s director general. E  On my way to meet with you, I heard a man on the radio complaining that the NSSF was closed at 10:30 am today and he could not get his payment…. That cannot be true. Employees of the NSSF have the same working hours as government employees [8:00 am to 2:00 pm]. But you know, it is Ramadan now and