Applications for payment of the additional care allowance are arriving en masse at all ZUS offices throughout Poland. In March, their number increased by 46% compared with February; in April, by 67.7% compared with March and as much as 145% compared with February.
– Over the course of two months, we received as many applications as we would normally receive in two years – says Iwona Kowalska-Matis, ZUS regional press spokeswoman in Lower Silesia. – Usually, care allowances account for only 8% of all applications, while currently almost half of all applications concern time spent caring for a child – she adds.
As the spokeswoman explains, there are days – particularly after another extension of the period for receiving the child-care allowance – when nearly 2,000 applications arrive at ZUS in Lower Silesia every day. Before each one can be sent for payment, it must be reviewed for the completeness of the documents and entitlement to sickness insurance, which is the basis for payment.
I. Kowalska-Matis:
Please bear in mind that, in addition to care allowances, we process applications for payment of other allowances, such as sickness, maternity and accident allowances, and we are doing everything we can to ensure payments are made on time, even though our employees also fall ill and – like all parents – have the right to care for a small child while a nursery is closed.
To process the large number of incoming applications, ZUS branches are assigning employees from other departments. The spokeswoman stresses that, apart from the number of applications received, their incompleteness is the biggest problem. ZUS:
Unfortunately, the vast majority of applications for child care are filled out incorrectly or do not include attachments from the employer (Z-3 or Z-3a) confirming that the employee is covered by sickness insurance. This means that we have to contact the applicant, in the case of self-employed people, or the employer, if someone has an employment contract or a contract of mandate, and ask for a correction.
For self-employed people, payment of an allowance from ZUS is never automatic. When an application reaches us, ZUS checks whether the applicant is covered by sickness insurance, since payment comes from this fund – that is, whether they have paid the contribution for March or submitted an application for exemption from contributions or for deferral of payment.
By law, an application is ALWAYS considered only after the period for which the allowance is requested has elapsed (and this was also the case previously, as nothing has changed in this respect). Unfortunately, a problem arises when neither a contribution nor any application – for deferral or exemption from payment of the contribution – has reached ZUS.
I. Kowalska-Matis: – Let me remind you that, under the regulations, an entrepreneur has until the end of June to do this, but in this situation it would be better to do it as soon as possible.
And she adds:
As a rule, we can speak of a delay in payment only when the payment is made more than 30 days after the day following the date on which the last document required to establish entitlement to the allowance was received by ZUS.
(The possibility of delays in the payment of benefits during the coronavirus pandemic was provided for by the lawmakers. The high number of applications means that it is not always possible to process applications for allowances within the statutory deadline).
– The figures I am giving represent only part of, rather than the full number of, the people who applied for and received the allowance – explains Iwona Kowalska-Matis. – For us, this is a huge number of entirely additional applications that have to be processed, and please remember that our employees also have small children, and some of them have stayed at home with them. This means that we are working with a reduced staff, while we also have to continue paying sickness allowances on an ongoing basis. It is a huge amount of work, and I assure you that we are doing everything we can to ensure the money is paid as quickly as possible; that is why we have reassigned employees from other positions to process allowance applications.
Important: For self-employed people, the condition for applying for an allowance is whether or not they pay the sickness insurance contribution for themselves. The health insurance contribution is mandatory, but sickness insurance is voluntary.