Cape Town - More than 10 000 applications from employers have been lodged with the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF).
Department of Labour spokesperson Teboho Thejane said: “By last Wednesday, we received applications from 16 720 employers that are quality audited for processing for the Department of Labour’s Covid-19 Temporary Employee/Employer Relief Scheme (Ters).”
Ters is a response to the challenges faced by businesses due to the Covid-19 lockdown.
Meanwhile, the department has set aside R40 billion to help employees who will be unable to work, as part of the effort to prevent jobs losses as a result of the lockdown. By Good Friday the Fund had paid out R356 million.
Thejane said: “Employers that are unable to pay the full salaries of workers who they have sent home due to lockdown are encouraged to apply for Covid-19 Ters benefits by sending an email to [email protected]. This benefit is applicable to all employers who are registered with UIF and make monthly contributions.”
“The front end of the application process is being automated in order to keep the high audit quality rate. The automated solution is set to go live today (April 14),” said Thejane.
Interviewed on SABC’s Morning Live on Monday, UIF Commissioner Teboho Maruping said: The department has introduced 50 more call centre agents to assist with claims as of last week.”
On whether the department was accepting outside assistance, Maruping said the agents were seconded to the department from Harambe, PWC and the Banking Association.
Maruping said: “There is no backlog as such in payments. As a result of the lockdown we are unable to confirm details of people’s compliance as some companies are not compliant and many are taking chances hoping that we’ll just pay out without doing due diligence. As a result, all this checking and counterchecking to weed out fraud is holding us up and so there is some delay.”
“We want businesses to apply on behalf of their employees, mainly because if all South Africans were to queue up and apply, the UIF couldn’t handle that sort of volume,” said Maruping.
“Individuals can apply on their own, but we don’t recommend this as it will flood us with too many demands for processing.”