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Generally, in this blog, I try to talk about subjects that are widely understood from any corner of the world, because fortunately we have readers in every continent. However today I want to share with our readers a subject that I know that entrepreneurs in Colombia will understand much more and agree with me: the odyssey that is to affiliate employees in the social security system of this country when you have never done it before.
Until recently we were part of the system as independent workers (taking into account that the company was conformed only by my brother and me). The reasons way we did it in that way are not important, but it was the model we could maintain until that moment. However, a couple of months ago we decided to affiliate the company to the system in order to make it responsible of providing us social security (health, pension, labor risks and compensation fund).
More than entering to the details of all the problems I had in order to do it, I just want to mention it was a very difficult task. I started the process at the beginning of September, and today at the beginning of November I haven’t been able to finish the process, among other reasons because we cannot affiliate to all of them at the same time, but one after another.
In this post I just want to share my feelings about all this situation. Governments definitely must support businessmen and not generate such difficult systems that end up discouraging entrepreneurship. In Colombia’s case additional to this odyssey, we have other problems that discourage entrepreneurship and investment, such as huge taxes that must be paid (more than 40% of utility).
I know this is not a problem of every country, but it is a problem we share with many countries. Governments and their politics should act as allies of entrepreneurship and not as their biggest enemy.
However, returning to the case of social security I must say that even if the system’s structure has been designed by the government, many companies that offer the services are private companies. My critic is also to them because the advice I received from them was very poor. I think that if they are private companies with an important capital, they should be able to offer a better service and technologies.
The truth is that my hands are tied, because I must continue with the process, but I want to say that it is very sad that Colombia doesn’t have sufficient tools lo support entrepreneurship and legality.
Image taken from Flickr.com
