Technical glitches continue to plague UIF Covid-19 relief system

Technical glitches on the Unemployment Insurance Fund's (UIF's) website are causing frustration as many people have not been able to submit claims to its Covid-19 relief fund.

Online, many South Africans and qualifying foreign citizens have expressed frustration after experiencing system glitches while trying to submit claims for May via the website's online portal.

According to the website, applications for this month have been put on hold.

“We have not started accepting temporary employer-employee relief scheme (Ters) applications for May yet. Kindly keep visiting our website for the latest updates for when we start accepting applications,” the site read.

According to a BusinessLIVE report, the uFiling website has not been working properly since it was relaunched on April 1.

Makhosonke Buthelezi, the UIF’s director of communication and marketing, said the uFiling website was working, but had “some challenges” which the labour department hoped to resolve by the end of the month.

Buthelezi advised that employers and employees should submit their queries to ufilingsupport@uif.gov.za. However, he warned “it may take a while before they get a response due to a number of queries”.

Last week, labour minister Thulas Nxesi said the department would investigate the due diligence of Covid-19 Ters benefits to avoid processing fraudulent claims.

During a virtual committee meeting on Wednesday, Nxesi said suspicious claims are being subjected to forensic audits where foul play is suspected.

“With these huge payments, inevitably you will attract criminals and companies colluding with employees to try and fleece the coffers. We will be engaging the services of the auditor-general and auditing firms to ensure we comb through all the payments”, Nxesi said.

Covid-19 relief funds were set up for employers who were most affected by the lockdown.

The labour department said since April 16, the UIF has paid out more than R11bn.

This includes benefits for more than 2-million workers and more than 161,500 companies that launched claims on their behalf.