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SSB Will Provide Benefits To the Suddenly Unemployed
posted (March 25, 2020)

And there will also be more relief for employers who have lost their revenue and employees who have lost their income.  

The Chairman of the Social Security Board  outlined the measures they will take to give relief to those who have lost their jobs:

Dough Singh - Chairman of the Board, Social Security
"We are proposing a statutory instrument to the government and it is in the making, where we will provide an amendment to the regulations act that will set aside that exemption period for anybody who is infected by COVID 19. What does that mean? It means that if you lost your employment and this is for people who had lost their employment as result of COVID 19, meaning the absence of tourist of a result of it, individuals who work in the hotel industry who the hospitality industry or anybody else who are affected and job was compromised as a result of COVID 19. Those individuals lost employment but we will consider the employment continuous of the purposes of any infection under COVID 19. So if 3 weeks after their loss of employment, they should contract the infection, then they will be medically covered as if they were continuously employed. So that should certainly set, give some ease to the tensions being created as a result of this to both the employers and the employees. We still want to encourage the employers to do what they can, some have suggested they continue to employ or pay 8 hours which is the minimum amount per week that you need to pay for someone to consider them to be continuously employed. We want to encourage that too because I think if we have very loyal, very hard working employees that you don't want to lose, in tough times like these if you can afford it, it would be a good gesture to continue to provide some payment to these individuals. In addition to that however, we have to put some provision in place for employers who are struggling at this point in time and we know that they are going to have difficulties meeting the obligation to make their payments for the social security contributions on the 15th of April and 15th of May. The 15th of March has gone by and I'm sure some had difficulties with that. What we're providing is that employers will need to continue to submit the filing as it becomes due but we are going to wave their requirement to make the payment at this point in time. The legislation at SSB under normal circumstances would automatically; not making your payment would attract penalties and interest. We are going to work with the Minister of Finance, the Honourable Prime Minister who is the only person legislatively that can actually waive these, so we're going to request a waiver of interest and penalties that accrue as a result of individuals not making those payments for the next 2 months and then we're going to work on a program to try to have them catch up to those payments as the set of circumstances ease. There is still going to be obligated to file the return just not actually make the payment."

Social Security is also making a 5 million dollar contribution to the national recovery effort.

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