APPLYING for the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) is easy. All you have to do is visit your nearest Department of Labour, with all the necessary documents.
However, things are not that easy for those who visit the Department of Labour Centre on Masonic Grove.
Instead of receiving the help they need, they are instead met by a man who sits in the parking lot of the building and directs them to other Department of Labour centres.
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Despite the indefinite closure of the centre last year, the Department of Labour’s website still advertises the Masonic Grove labour centre on its website.
Like many others, Jeremy Hurter, who has since become unemployed and is trying to register for UIF, says he went to Centre because it is more central to him but discovered it was closed.
“I needed to visit the Department of Labour to register for UIF this week. I found out that the Labour Centre in Masonic Grove closed down about a year ago. There are now only three labour centres in Durban and they are all in outlying areas, nothing central for the people of Durban. You can go to Phoenix, Pinetown or Isipingo. One of the major issues though is that the Department of Labour website still advertises this labour centre on the website,” said Hurter.
The centre was closed following a prohibition notice which was served on the property by an Occupational Health and Safety Specialist after an inspection revealed unsafe and unhealthy conditions. According to the Department of Public Works, there is an emergency plan in place to attend to all the building defects that resulted in the temporary closure of the office.
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The Department of Labour is implementing a contingency plan to ensure service delivery continues.
This includes deploying staff from the Durban Labour Centre to Pinetown, Verulam and Prospecton labour centres, as well as satellite offices in Phoenix and Chatsworth.
“The Department apologises to all those affected. We encourage the public to use the aforementioned labour centres and satellite offices until further notice. The public can contact the Department of Labour’s Provincial Office on 031 366 2000 for service related enquiries,” said the department’s provincial spokesperson Lungelo Mkamba.
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