(1)In view of the COVID-19 pandemic that will result in many companies having a substantially lower return of earnings for the current financial year which is going to affect their submissions in terms of the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act, Act 130 of 1993, in order to renew their letters of good standing, what mechanisms (a) has his department put in place to address a potentially large number of companies that will be flagged for audit as a result of the lower return of earnings and (b) will be put in place to speed up the audit process to ensure that a letter of good standing can be issued quickly in order to not negatively impact companies;
(2) whether his department will make the submission of supporting documents more user-friendly and streamlined in preparation for this; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details;
(3) whether his department will allow an appeals process for assessments based on estimations where a potential system overload causes companies to fail to submit documents within the requisite 21 days; if not, why not; if so; what are the relevant details;
(4) what adjustments have been made to the system to allow companies to submit large files such as audited financial statements in order to mitigate against the loss of documents resulting from zipped files and multiple separate emailed documents due to the limited size allowed;
(5) what is (a) the current backlog of audits and (b) being done to address the specified backlogs?