The Tribune

The Government last night said furloughed workers still being paid part of their normal salary by employers will not receive the full weekly unemployment benefit in a bid to conserve "scarce resources".

The Ministry of Finance, in a statement designed to push back against Baha Mar's assertions that furloughed staff were being treated unfairly through not receiving the full $100 weekly benefit, argued that such statements were "inaccurate".

Denying that the Government was "holding up" unemployment benefits, the Ministry explained it had implemented a policy where it was offsetting ex-gratia payments workers are still receiving from their employers against the $100 benefit.

This means the Government-funded unemployment benefit will only make up any difference between employer-funded payments and the weekly $100 that workers would otherwise receive if they had zero income sources.

The Ministry of Finance added that with COVID-19's economic fall-out dragging on much longer than anticipated, and tax and other revenue streams down by at least 50 percent compared to pre-COVID-19 levels, it had no choice but to conserve dwindling financial resources while still providing needy Bahamians with much-needed assistance.

"The Ministry of Finance would like to bring clarity to public discourse around payments to the Government's extended unemployment benefit programme based on inaccurate suggestions that payments have been unfairly held up to certain individuals," it said last night.

Explaining that the Government had stepped in to further assist terminated and furloughed workers after their 13-week National Insurance Board (NIB) unemployment benefit came to an end, the Ministry said some 36,959 persons had received just over a combined $91.9m from the Public Treasury-funded extension as at end-November 2020.

This initiative is now set to continue through the end of January 2021, and the Ministry of Finance added: "Notwithstanding the fact that the budget for this unemployment assistance had been largely exhausted, and the Government’s revenue continued to be very constrained, the Government recognised the need to provide additional assistance to individuals given the severity of the circumstances.

"With limited available resources, the Government took the policy position that persons in the special unemployment benefit programme would receive income or income support of no less than $100 per week.

"The difference in this iteration is that persons who work part-time, or who receive ex-gratia or other payments from the employer, would only receive payments from the programme to bring them up to a minimum of $100 in income and/or income support. This approach was taken to ensure that in an environment of scarce public resources, as many people as possible would obtain some measure of assistance."

To verify that workers qualify under this revised approach, and to determine the sums due to them, the Government has required that employers submit the necessary information to NIB. The social security system said the "last major employer" had submitted its list of eligible employees on Tuesday evening.

"The Government remains exceedingly grateful to all those employers throughout the country who have provided ex-gratia payments to employees during this time, as well as those many employers who have had employees on full-time or part-time schedules throughout the pandemic even as the businesses themselves faced extreme commercial challenges," the Ministry of Finance said.

The issues between the Government and Baha Mar over the revised unemployment benefit emerged last month when Brensil Rolle, minister with responsibility for the public service and National Insurance, told Tribune Business the mega resort had failed to supply the Government with a list of still-furloughed employees at its Grand Hyatt, SLS and Rosewood brands as well as the Melia Nassau Beach resort.

He explained that the Government required this information, which is requested from all other hotels and employers with still temporarily laid-off staff, so that NIB - which is administering the now-taxpayer funded benefits - can verify that each worker's status has remained unchanged.

Explaining that this was done "to cover our backs", and ensure the Government's scarce resources were directed to those most in need, instead of unemployment benefits going to persons who had gone back to work, Mr Rolle said he was "puzzled" by Baha Mar's failure to send its employee list.

He also confirmed then that NIB and the Government had netted off the 30 percent ex-gratia payment Baha Mar was making to staff against the unemployment benefits they were due, effectively paying the difference.

The Ministry of Finance last night said NIB has to-date paid out a collective $97.5m to Bahamian workers impacted by COVID-19 via its 13-week benefits scheme.