‘No backlog’ in Ters relief payments
Unemployment Insurance Fund commissioner Teboho Maruping insists there is no backlog in the payment of the Covid-19 relief benefit, and says the fund has paid all those who have met the required criteria, laying the blame for any possible delays on employers who are filing applications incorrectly.
Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) commissioner Teboho Maruping insists there is no backlog in the payment of the Covid-19 relief benefit, and says the fund has paid all those who have met the required criteria, laying the blame for any possible delays on employers who are filing applications incorrectly.
“The applications you are referring to as a backlog are applications that don’t meet the rules and our criteria. We are and will not be able to process them until the applicants comply with the rules,” Maruping told Business Day.
The Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (Ters) was established as a key part of a R500bn government economic and social relief package to help those affected by the lockdown, which is set to push the economy into its biggest slump in about a century.
The UIF has set aside R40bn for the Ters scheme, of which R27.9bn has already been paid to more than 6-million people. The scheme has also been hit by teething technical issues including problems with its registration system.
The technical issues further delayed payment of the Ters benefit leaving millions of workers waiting for their money.
There are also about a million people whose applications were rejected as they were not found on the UIF system. This is a contentious issue, with Business for SA (B4SA) expressing disapproval at the UIF blaming employers when the administrative system has “proven so grossly unreliable”. Maruping acknowledged there had been system glitches, but said that the UIF should not be blamed for issues of undeclared employees.
He said the fund had been in contact with employers requiring them to confirm if they were indeed employees and provide proof of that.
However, so far there had not been co-operation from the employers, Maruping said.
“This now begs the question: are these really employees of the companies in question or are they trying their luck to see if the UIF will pay? We have bent over backwards — even advising these companies on how to declare their employees if, indeed, they work for them,” Maruping said.
“It seems to us that some employers have not been compliant and when Ters was announced, they thought they could sneak in undeclared workers.”
Maruping said some employers had been underdeclaring employees but now want to claim for the full complement. The fund also encouraged workers of these companies to come forward and apply for UIF as individuals, if they are actually employees.
“We had to amend a directive to give effect to this, but to no avail. How the fund is blamed for this remains a mystery,” he said.
“If, indeed, it was [the] UIF’s fault, the fund could not have paid more than 6-million workers. Why were we able to pay the numbers that we have paid?
“The answer is clear: the workers were declared by their employers, hence the system was able to recognise them.”
The Ters benefit was made available for only three months, with June being the last month.
Maruping said the UIF was committed to honouring all outstanding claims and paying as it received the information for some of the outstanding claims.
“If we have the proper information, we pay. We have been appealing for employers to give us the full information to enable us to pay. Applications that have been received already will be worked on until all outstanding payments are resolved.”