UIF Ters benefit payments suspended – again

Just a day after Employment and Labour Minister Thula Nxesi announced the extension of the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) Temporary Employer-Employee Relief Scheme (Ters) to 15 September, it has once again been suspended with immediate effect.

This follows Auditor-General (AG) Kimi Makwetu’s damning report last week which identified poor financial management and verification controls, leading to millions of rands in payments to the deceased, and people in prison.

Hours after the shocking outcomes of the report by the AG, Nxesi announced the suspension of UIF commissioner Teboho Maruping, the Director-General of the Department of Employment and Labour, the CFO, COO and the Head of the Supply Chain.

In a statement on its website, the Department of Labour noted that the suspension had been necessitated to mitigate risks identified by the AG in the Ters application system, and it would announce in due time when payments will resume.

Source: Employment and Labour website.

This is the same reason the department cited for suspending payments for 24 hours, just over two weeks ago (August 25).

Extension welcomed

Despite the halt in payments, Business for South Africa (B4SA) said in a statement that it is pleased with Nexis’s announcement for the further extension of the scheme.

“It appears that this extension will last until the State of Disaster ends, but final confirmation on funding availability for this is awaited.”

The scheme will assist the following applicants;

• Employees whose employers are not permitted to operate fully/partially;
• Vulnerable employees whose employers are unable to make alternative arrangements/implement special measures for such employees to return to work;
• And employees whose employers are unable to make use of their services fully/partially due to operational requirements.

The department noted that the UIF website will be unavailable from 6pm on 11 September until 8pm on 13 September.

It will continue accepting applications for March to end July until September 15, after which no further applications shall be accepted.

The UIF has paid out more than R41 billion to more than 9.5 million workers so far.

This article first appeared on Moneyweb and was republished with permission.

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