How to make the UIF work for workers

The new commissioner of the Unemployment Insurance Fund, Teboho Maruping, says non-compliant companies are largely to blame for delays in the payment of benefits.

"Calculations about what benefits are owed depend on companies doing their paperwork properly and providing the UIF with the necessary information, which too many of them are not doing," said Maruping, who has been the chief director of operations since 2014 and acting commissioner of the UIF since September 2016.

He was permanently appointed in the position last month.

"You'll find someone is applying for maternity leave. But their company has never declared them at all. We spend too much time following up with the companies trying to get the details, because UIF is driven on contributions from employee and employer."

If the UIF paid out benefits without this information, "we could easily exhaust our funds within two years", he said.

"So we spend most of our time pursuing companies to give us the relevant details we need to determine how much they owe the UIF. We then give them a debt letter. Then they must pay what is owing, and only then can we process the claim. That's where most of our delays come."

He said a "sizable" number of companies were not complying. "It's our greatest challenge."

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In spite of this, the UIF is sitting on a surplus of R119-billion which suggests a massive over-recovery of contributions. Its latest annual report for the year ended March 2016 shows that the fund is collecting vastly more in contributions from employers and employees than it is paying out in benefits.

According to the report, it collected R17.12-billion in contributions in the last financial year, and paid out R7.69-billion in benefits.

The DA argued that contributions should be reduced to put more money in the pockets of workers. The National Treasury agreed and tabled a one-year payment holiday which it later retracted because of an outcry from, among others, the UIF, which said the impact on its systems had not been properly calculated.

In short, it would create even more confusion and delays in benefit payments than were already the case.

The DA then proposed a reduction in monthly contributions instead of a holiday. It was argued that this would be almost as complicated.

DA labour spokesman Ian Ollis said it did not need to be.

"If the UIF didn't have extremely poor computer systems, and did some training of their staff, then they'd be able to run a system like that."

Maruping said he was committed to addressing both issues, but even without the practical difficulties involved he was not in favour of a payment holiday or a reduction in contributions.

He said the UIF Amendment Act which the president signed this week would substantially increase the amount of money being paid out by the fund for maternity and sick leave.

The amendment act also increased the period in which people could claim for unemployment from six to 12 months. The pool of applicants for benefits would therefore increase and lead to "a huge amount" of additional spending from the fund, he said.

Parliament was also about to approve a further set of amendments which would lead to the payment of benefits for paternity and adoption leave.

Together with the dire state of the economy this would make a contribution holiday or reduction "risky", he said.

block_quotes_start He was giving himself five years "at the most" to provide South Africa with "a world-class UIF system" block_quotes_end

The UIF used some of its surplus to help turn around companies in distress.

"The risk is that when the economy goes in the wrong direction, as it is doing now, we'll have more companies in distress that require UIF intervention. We cannot be found wanting when money is required."

Maruping agreed that the UIF badly needed to improve its performance. "We need to restructure how the labour centres are functioning."

All the different functions related to processing a claim are currently being performed separately by different centres, leading to confusion and delays, he said.

"I want to change the model so that each labour centre processes each application from end to end. So you enter the labour centre and when you leave your claim has been processed. Every labour centre must be converted into a processing centre."

He conceded that UIF staff needed to be far better trained and skilled than they were now for this one-stop shop concept to work.

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"It will involve retraining people and re-skilling them. We need to be aggressive about this. We have not been as aggressive as we should have been. We could have done better."

Social media and online complaint sites like Hellopeter.com are replete with complaints from women who spend half their maternity leave waiting for the UIF to pay them the benefits they're owed, and with stories about documents needing to be resubmitted and inadequately trained and unresponsive staff.

But Maruping insisted there were no unreasonable payout delays. "There are no known backlogs," he said.

Really?

"It depends on how you define backlog."

What, then, was his definition of a backlog?

"If I have all the information I need to process a claim and I still haven't done that within five weeks."

Five weeks? Even people who submit their claims electronically rather than manually are having to wait between eight and 12 weeks, according to professional agents who do it for them.

Maruping agreed that that would constitute a backlog.

"But I don't know if it is true. I don't believe it. It can't be true. Our online system is working very well."

Many people desperately trying to get applications for benefits approved before they starve would disagree.

There are complaints that the UIF's uFiling system is a waste of time, and that online applicants end up having to go to the offices and stand in interminable queues anyway.

block_quotes_start That's why in order for this to happen I really need to be aggressive about it. Hold people accountable. We need to execute, we shouldn't just plan block_quotes_end

Maruping agreed that there was room for improvement of the uFiling platform "to make it easier for applicants".

His goal was to have as little human intervention in the checking and approval process as possible. He wanted it all done electronically and had given himself until the end of March to achieve this.

This would mean fewer staff would be needed, but he said there would be no retrenchments. Instead staff would be "redirected" to other tasks such as providing counselling for applicants about possible job opportunities.

This means staff who are already in many cases out of their depth will have to learn new skills very quickly. "We'll have to take them through rigorous training," he said.

Maruping, 45, grew up in Soweto and has a master's degree in information and knowledge management from Stellenbosch University.

He arrived at the UIF via a leadership programme at the Gordon Institute of Business Science; a project management diploma at Damelin; stints as a team manager at Telkom and as an operations manager at Absa, Standard Bank and Nedbank; and a part-time lectureship in knowledge management and strategy analysis at the Tshwane University of Technology.

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He was giving himself five years "at the most" to provide South Africa with "a world-class UIF system".

Among the ambitious projects he had lined up to achieve this was the introduction of free Wi-Fi "so you can apply [for benefits] online even if you're just driving past the labour centre".

If his plans to streamline the application process were implemented then approval "should take less than 10 days", he said. "Even within five days if everything we need is in order. Give me two years. Ten days within a year."

He wanted "an active citizenry", meaning that employees would go to the UIF website and check that their company was making the right contributions so that compliance issues could be dealt with upfront, "before you start claiming", he said.

"If not, you lodge a complaint on the site anonymously."

He agreed that the challenge would be to handle those complaints quickly and efficiently, which is something the UIF has never been accused of doing before.

"That will require capacity and proper planning."

Unfulfilled promises about capacity building have not been in short supply at the UIF, of course.

"That's why in order for this to happen I really need to be aggressive about it. Hold people accountable. We need to execute, we shouldn't just plan. If we need to discipline people to get things done then we must do that."

Lack of accountability and disciplining of employees had been a weakness, he said, which he intended to address.

"I want to leave my mark. I want to make a difference."