DA suggests Sars should take over Covid-19 Ters payments if UIF can’t manage

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has suggested that the South African Revenue Service (Sars) should handle the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) Covid-19 Temporary Employee / Temporary Employer Scheme (Ters) benefit applications on behalf of the UIF if they are unable to deal with the number of applications.

“If the UIF is unable to cope with processing and paying out a high volume of Covid-19 Ters benefit applications, then the function should be handed over to Sars.

“In the ordinary course of events, Sars collects UIF money paid over by employers and transfers it to the UIF. Sars has the expertise and systems to pay over the Covid-19 Ters benefit to employers swiftly,” saud DA MP Michael Cardo in a statement on Tuesday.

Cardo said the UIF needed to communicate clearly about how many Covid-19 Ters benefit applications it had received, processed and approved.

“This will hopefully help to ease the anxiety and desperation of many South African workers, who do not know whether they will be able to put food on the table at the end of the month,” the MP said.

He said media reports suggested that so far the UIF had received 27,000 applications.

“This seems like a very small number, given that more than 1.5 million companies pay contributions to the UIF, that the overwhelming majority of those companies are currently shut down and many are in financial distress, and that thousands of employees are either on unpaid leave or temporarily laid off.

“Moreover, it is not yet readily apparent when the UIF will start paying over the Covid-19 Ters benefit to employers, and when this money will begin finding its way into the pockets of despairing workers.”

Cardo said the DA reiterated its call upon the government to publish a daily dashboard of claims received, processed and paid.

“The UIF has a reputation for being inefficient, and it may face insurmountable human, infrastructural and IT-resource challenges in paying over the Covid-19 Ters benefit timeously.

He said in 2019, the UIF paid out 817,743 claims over 12 months and, of these claims, only 24,743 were made online.

“During the lockdown, all UIF claims have to be processed electronically since Labour Centres are closed.

“We need to know, very quickly, on the basis of hard facts and figures, whether the UIF is up to the task of processing and disbursing monies for a high volume of Covid-19 Ters applications.

“If it is not, then this function should be transferred to Sars to administer with immediate effect.”

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