The extension of the government’s wage protection scheme for workers affected by the Covid-19 lockdown is supposed to provide assistance to sectors that are not fully operational, such as tourism, hospitality and the liquor industry, the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) said on Friday.
The UIF, which funds the Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (Ters), said the granular details about who will be eligible for the extension, will be discussed and finalised by social partners at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac).
It said it would announce the opening of the system for the new payment period once the work to configure its systems was complete.
President Cyril Ramaphosa in his state of the nation address on Thursday announced that the Ters benefit would be extended to March 15. This means it would cover the period from October 15 2020, when the benefit originally came to an end, until March.
To date, the UIF has paid out close to R60bn since March 2020 through 13-million payments. The initial budget was R40bn, and formed part of the government’s R500bn social and economic relief plan implemented in 2020 when the country entered a hard lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Social partners and the UIF have been negotiating an extension of the scheme at Nedlac for the past few months, but had not been able to come to a consensus. The fund had proposed that relief be provided to workers through the reduced-work-time benefit, but business and labour were worried about the effect it would have on workers UIF credit.
The partners on Friday said they were pleased that there had finally been an announcement that the benefit would now be extended.
“Notwithstanding many teething problems, this scheme has been a flagship in the fight against the coronavirus,” Rob Legh of Business for SA’s labour stream said.
“It has been effective in preserving the jobs of hundreds of thousands of workers, who might otherwise have lost their jobs. We look forward to working with our government and labour colleagues in Nedlac to finalise the details of the revised scheme,” he said.
Cosatu’s parliamentary co-ordinator, Matthew Parks, said the federation, which has been part of the negotiations at Nedlac, was expecting the scheme to be in the same form as 2020, but that it would not be available to all sectors.
He said beside the sectors still affected by restrictions, the Ters also needed to be available for those over 60 or with comorbidities who could not go to work or work from home.
Parks, while welcoming the announcement of the extension, said in principle Cosatu believed that the benefit should stay in place for as long as there are Covid-19 restrictions in place affecting businesses and workers.
“Whenever you have those restrictions, you must give some form of relief,” he said.
Parks said they needed to look at adding public servants to the UIF, which would help the fund with a “bit of recovery”.
The UIF said on Friday said it was continuing with processing and paying valid and complete outstanding Ters claims that were already in the system.
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