BDLive reports that providing unemployment cover for people who resign and have no alternative employment and those who work in the informal sector, as recommended by Nedlac, would be fraught with problems.  

Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) commissioner Boas Seruwe has in the past supported widening the net of beneficiaries and has indicated that the fund has resources for it.  The Labour Department’s Thembinkosi Mkalipi said in a briefing to MPs that Nedlac (National Economic Development and Labour Council) had requested that informal and self-employed workers be provided with unemployment insurance, as well as those who resigned.  But, the department is not keen to adopt these proposals immediately, without first investigating their cost.  Mkalipi said that including the informal sector and the self-employed would place strain on the fund and raised the problem of defining when a person in the informal sector became unemployed.  Also, the department was reluctant to create an incentive for people to leave their jobs to access benefits.  Providing for paternity leave — another Nedlac proposal — would be affordable if the informal sector was not included within the ambit of the fund, Mkalipi indicated.

• Read this report by Linda Ensor in full at BDLive

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