EMSIE FERREIRA, BRYAN PEARSON, Cape Town | Thursday 5.40pm
LABOUR Minister Membathisi Mdladlana on Thursday unveiled a draft law that will widen the safety net for the country’s temporarily unemployed.
The Unemployment Insurance Bill proposes to extend unemployment benefits to categories of workers, such as domestic workers and seasonal farm labourers, who don’t qualify under current laws, Mdladlana said.
It also seeks to include higher income groups into the system, raising the threshold for those who qualify to above the current R93288 per year, labour commissioner Shadack Mkhonto said.
The labour ministry has proposed that the new cut-off limit should be R132000 a year, he said.
At the moment, unemployed workers are paid 45% of their previous incomes for up to 34 weeks should they lose their jobs. The new bill, according to Mdladlana, proposes a graduated benefit scale whereby low-income earners will be given 60% of their former salaries and middle-come groups 30%.
The bill also sets out to separate maternity and unemployment benefits so that pregnant women do not draw from their unemployment benefits when they go on leave. Mkhonto said the bill contains measures to strengthen the country’s unemployment insurance fund, which is currently R200-million in the red. According to Mkhonto, some 840000 temporarily unemployed people claim from the fund every year. –AFP