Nxesi offers special relief to 75K workers who could lose jobs following unrest

This includes workers faced with temporal layoffs and retrenchments.

Nxesi revealed the staggering figure in a media briefing on Wednesday. 

“The Unemployment Insurance Fund has a basket of benefits that can serve as intervention mechanism to the affected workers and companies as a result of the unrests. 

“It should be mentioned upfront that there is currently no benefit quite suitable for the current situation, and COVID-19 TERS cannot be applicable as it was established as an intervention for a disaster situation,” said Nxesi.

He added the department was in the process of drafting a special directive to provide aid for the affected employees. 

“The spirit of the directive would be to ensure that workers who would normally not qualify for these benefits due to non-compliance with the Act are able to access the benefits. 

“However, I should emphasise that it will not be a free for all, the criteria to determine who qualifies is going to be very stringent and payments will not be generous. Whiles it is our desire to pay all affected workers; it should be borne in mind that finance is a limited resource.”

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He vowed tight measures would be in place to guard against misuse of the funds.

“Therefore, I have instructed the officials to gather data of businesses that have been affected, and also perform an analysis of those who will afford to carry their employee’s salaries during this period. 

“On the basis of this analysis we shall be able to indicate the benefit calculation that we will follow; whether it is a flat rate across the board, an Income Replacement Rate, or combination of the two – depending on the nature of the application.

“All details pertaining to who qualifies, payment structure, the application process and the duration of the payment period will be outlined in the direction.”