As a continuation to the previous correspondence, the Ministry of Labour, Welfare and Social Insurance has issued an announcement with regards to the Five support plans that can be found on coronavirus.mlsi.gov.cy. The 5 support plans of Special Leave for Childcare, Special Sickness Benefit, Benefit for the Self-employed, Plan for full suspension of Business, and Plan for partial suspension of business that were valid from 16/03/20 until 12/4/20 will now be valid from 13/4/20 until 12/5/20 with the following variations:
- For the first time employees commencing work in February and March 2020 will now be included on the precondition that their employee will declare them in a new document that has been issued (EEA7).
- The minimum benefit amount of €360 is issued retrospectively for a period of 4 weeks.
- The higher amount of the comparison between the insurance preconditions of 2018 and the last paid salary.
It is noted that supplementary grants have now been issued for the above changes that were made on the plans and which are applied retrospectively.
In addition, a new plan for those who are unemployed and whose normal unemployment benefit expired in February and March 2020 was issued and where accordingly a special benefit of €360 will be paid.
The new e-applications will be available from Tuesday May 6th on www.coronavirus.mlsi.gov.cy so that they can be submitted online.
For employees for whom it was not possible to confirm their bank account in spite of all efforts, as of Tuesday May 6th the issue of cheques will commence since there is no other way to pay the benefits for the plans announced that were valid from March 16th until April 12th 2020.
Finally, an extension of the deadline to pay Social Insurance contributions has been announced until 14/05/20 concerning March Contribution and with no additional charges. Payments can be made through JCCSMART.