Unemployment benefits soon

The thousands of unemployed Barbadians at home waiting on their unemployment benefits should receive some relief soon.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley said with just under 14,000 unemployment benefit applications since the middle of March, she has asked NIS’ Board and the Director of Finance and Economic Affairs to put a system in place that would see a separate group of people processing unemployment benefits alone.

In a televised message to the nation Saturday evening, Mottley made it clear that people need to have access to their benefits.

“We have agreed that that special system and special group of additional workers will be put in place such that the first unemployment benefit cheque should go out within the next ten days,” Mottley said.

“Equally … that first cheque will cover not one week, but four weeks of unemployment benefits one time to give people the opportunity to steady themselves and to plan as they go forward. This is the absolute minimum that is required of us as a Government and as a social security system in order to protect those who are most in need,” she said.

She said NIS has been experiencing difficulty where employers are failing to submit workers’ earning schedule. She therefore appealed to employers to submit the critical information which allows for the applications to be processed efficiently.

However, the Prime Minister said even where earning schedules are not immediately available, “we will have to go back and look at the average earnings of that person in order to make this judgement for the first month”.

Mottley said Barbados’ unemployment benefit fund, established in the early 1980’s, would be quickly exhausted during the COVID-19 pandemic, but noted that Government will have to find the money to recapitalize those aspects of the social security scheme  that are going to be most at pressure as a result of this extraordinary increase in unemployment.

She said the survival package initially announced will be  built upon from a business perspective. (AH)