Short time work allowance extended in Turkey

* Photo: Anadolu Agency (AA)

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Ended on March 31, short time work allowance has been extended for three months by the Presidential decision issued by President and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Published in the Official Gazette today (April 23), the Presidential decision has extended the period of short time work allowance payments to be made to the businesses which applied for short time work. The payment will cover the period starting from April 1 till June 30, 2021.

With this decision, the period of allowance has been extended for the businesses which made an application for short time allowance until January 31, 2021 (this date included) within the scope of the seasonal situations arising from the external effects of COVID-19 and as per the provisions of the provisional Article 23 of the Unemployment Insurance Law.

Accordingly, this period has been extended until June 30 within the scope of the Presidential decision dated June 29, 2020 and no. 2706.

About short time work allowance

Introduced in March 2020 to curb the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the short time work allowance ended as of March 31.

The short-time work allowance can be broadly defined as the payment made to employees for periods of time that they do not work in cases where the working hours are reduced or work is completely stopped.

While employees would receive the allowance for the last time on April 5, after the end of the short time work allowance, employers would either switch their employees to full-time work or put them on unpaid leave and will be paid an unpaid leave allowance of 1,324 lira (164 USD).

Since the start of the pandemic, more than 3.7 million employees have been paid a total of 27.7 billion lira (~3.44 billion USD) of short-time work allowance from the Unemployment Insurance Fund, according to Turkish Employment Agency (İŞKUR) figures.

In February, 1.3 million people were paid short-time work allowance and 751,000 were paid unpaid leave allowance, according to the İŞKUR. (HA/SD)