DURBAN - While the Covid-19 Ters has paid more than R63 billion to 5.4 million workers, currently there are more than 801 806 employees who have not been paid due to one or other rejection codes in their error description, the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) said yesterday.
The UIF released the payment statistics of the Covid-19 temporary employer/employee relief scheme (Ters) and normal benefits in a media briefing held in Durban yesterday.
UIF spokesperson Makhosonke Buthelezi said that the most common errors fell within the broad categories of declarations, incorrect banking details, incorrect income, invalid identity and passport numbers, incorrectly captured salary received during the lockdown and failure to upload employees on the Ters portal.
“The genuine errors we worked to assist employers to correct was 451 111,” said Buthelezi.
The fund said that some 46 employers had been reported to law enforcement agencies for possible fraud. It said that, to date, 18 arrests had been made with two cases from KwaZulu-Natal.
Buthelezi said close to R900 million was recovered through the follow-the-money project. The fraud cases included employers claiming for employees who were working. In those instances, the Covid-19 Ters money was not paid over to employees because it had been claimed fraudulently and not for workers. Employers also submitted false claims, used money for personal expenses such as paying for credit cards, buying luxurious cars and for operating costs and others.
There were other instances where the employer claimed Covid-19 Ters, but still paid employees a full salary, which meant that there should have been no claim from the Covid-19 Ters funds.
For the Workers Affected by Unrest established after the unrest that occurred in KZN and parts of Gauteng in July, the UIF said that it had received 14 848 claims to date.
Some 12 406 KZN claims had gone through verification. In KZN, 4 540 claims had failed initial verification because 220 were not found in the Department of Home Affairs database, six were paid by the Department of Public Service and Administration and 4 314 were not declared with UIF from January to June this year.
BUSINESS REPORT ONLINE