Announcement!
This is a notification for product news or an alert. If you have a question, please start a new discussion

C19 TERS Report: Extension of TERS benefit and new TERS Direction (19/08/2020)

The South African Minister of Employment and Labour published a new TERS Direction.

This Direction is effective 27 June 2020 and extends the TERS benefits until 15 August 2020 with new rules.

Below is a summary of the changes/new information.

Categories of employers/employees who can claim for July and August:

  1. Employers/employees not yet permitted to commence operations (either partially or fully) under the Disaster Management Regulations.
  2. Employers unable to implement special measures in respect of ‘vulnerable employees’ or to make alternative arrangements for them to work from home.

*’vulnerable employees’ are defined as employees with health issues or comorbidities that place them a risk if infected by Covid-19 and/or employees 60 years of age who are at higher risk if infected with Covid-19.

  1. Employers who are unable to make use of the employees’ services (either fully or partially) because of the operational requirements, based on economic, technological, structural or similar needs of the employer caused by compliance with the Disaster Management Regulations (in particular the need to limit the number of employees at the workplace by way of rostering, staggering of working hours, short time and the introduction of shift systems).

Remuneration received during lockdown:

A definition of ‘remuneration’ was added and refers to ‘remuneration as defined in the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA), read with section 35(5) of the BCEA and Government Gazette 24889’.

Therefore, the employer must report BCEA remuneration as ‘monthly remuneration’ and ‘remuneration received during lockdown’ and not UIF remuneration as defined in the UICA, as per the previous directives (the assumption is that it is only applicable to claims from July onwards).

TERS application procedure:

The TERS applications for July and August 2020 opened 17 August 2020.

When the employer applies, they currently only have one option to select as ‘lockdown period’ which is 1 July 2020 – 15 August 2020. Therefore, the employer must complete 1 and a half month’s information (i.e. 6 weeks) in the CSV file for the affected employees in order to apply for July and August.

CSV file:

The DoEL has also released an amended TERS CSV file (see attached). Column O’s heading was changed to “Remuneration for work done or work to be done in July 2020 and August 2020’ to align with the above mentioned amendments.

12.08.2020 Copy of National_Disaster_Payment-Excel_Template.xlsx

Changes to existing TERS payroll report :

The TERS payroll report in your payroll application is still designed as per the previous specifications from DoEL (using UIF Remuneration). The report will be amended to be able to accommodate the new changes, and is currently under review with the Sage Product Delivery team.

It is advisable to ensure you BCEA remuneration setup and flagging is correct in your RSA companies (BCEA remuneration is used to calculate your termination rate and leave pay rate of employees).

Please refer to the post:

C19 TERS Report: Updated report now available with new selection option "BCEA Remuneration" (for period 1 June - 15 August)