One of the rights granted to insured employees in the Social Insurance and General Health Insurance Code No. 5510, which is the basic law of Turkish Social Insurance Law, is “temporary incapacity allowance”.
Incapacity for work is the name given to the temporary inability of an insured employee to work during a period of rest, based on physician or medical board reports, as a result of illness, work accident, occupational illness, or pregnancy.
In this regard, temporary incapacity allowance is the financial aid paid by the Social Security Institution (SSI) to compensate for the loss of income the insured people experience while they are unable to work due to a work accident, occupational disease, illness or pregnancy.
Under normal circumstances, according to Turkish Labour Law, employers are not obliged to pay wages to workers who do not work for the days they do not work, regardless of the reason. In this way, a worker who does not get wages and his employer does not employ the worker during his rest period loses income. If the employer notifies the SSI that “The insured person did not work on the days he/she was on rest”, the SSI will pay temporary incapacity allowance to the employee.
However, the situation is different when a netting protocol is prepared between the Social Security Institution and the workplace. In this case, the amount of temporary incapacity allowance to be paid to the employee is to be paid by the SSI by deducting it from the debt of the employer who paid the employee’s monthly wage in full.
Conditions for Receiving Temporary Incapacity Allowance
In order to receive temporary incapacity allowance, the employee must meet the following conditions:
- The fact that the insured person becomes incapacitated as a result of illness, pregnancy, work accident or occupational disease must be documented with a health report issued by a physician or health committee authorized by the Social Security Institution.
- The insured person applying for temporary incapacity allowance must have paid 90 days of social security premiums within one year before the report date. This condition is not required for applications made due to a work accident or occupational disease.
- Employers must notify the SSI electronically as the insured individuals did not work at the workplace during their period of rest. If the employer does not make this notification within the legal period, an administrative fine will be imposed to the employer by the SSI. After the notification period has passed, the insured’s temporary incapacity allowance is paid regardless of whether the notification is made or not.
