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Many employers and employees in South Africa have been left severely inconvenienced by the Unemployment Insurance Fund’s (UIF) online platforms that have been offline for more than a month.
Internet Filing, the service provider which was previously responsible for the UIF’s online platforms, received a court interdict to halt the fund from appointing a new service provider.
The UIF provides online services such as uFiling, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Virtual Office, and the UIF Covid19 TERS systems.
On 23 August 2024, the North Gauteng High Court ruled that Afrinova Digital could not provide any IT related services to the UIF until a legal matter with Internet Filing was resolved.
“The reasons for granting the interim interdict are reserved,” reads the order.
According to reports, uFiling website’s would give users a “scheduled maintenance” message, but on Tuesday the website is completely down.
The minister of employment and labour, Nomakhosazana Meth, assured the public that she and the department will “get to the bottom” of the reasons that has led to interdict to avoid an incident like this from happening again.
While she welcomes the judgment, she appealed for patience and said an announcement will be made to the public in “due course,” about when online services will resume.
According to the department of employment and labour, the interim interdict was handed down on 30 August 2024. However, the date on the court order is 5 September 2024.
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Afrinova Digital and the UIF signed a service level agreement on 11 July 2024 for the company to start rendering services from 19 August 2024.
However, Internet Filing, whose contract with the fund was supposed to come to an end on 18 August 2024, was not aware its contract would not be renewed.
According to the court order, the UIF must consider extending Internet Filing’s agreement to avoid “any disastrous consequences caused by the interim interdict”.
The UIF was also ordered to pay Afrinova Digital for services rendered from 19 August until the date of the order.
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The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has since raised concerns over the lack of communication about when the online platforms will be functional again.
In a media statement, the trade union said the extended operating hours at some centres have made little difference to employers who have been using the uFiling platform to declare and pay UIF contributions on behalf of their employees.
“Workers do not deserve to be treated this way, especially when they are at their most vulnerable after having lost employment, highly pregnant or having just given birth.”
Cosatu wrote to the Acting Commissioner Judith Kumbi two weeks ago to ask when the uFiling platform will be back online. It said it is still waiting for a response.
“As a result, the federation is calling on Minister Meth to intervene and take the necessary steps to ensure that uFiling is functional again and serving the people of South Africa because UIF is a contributory social security fund, and having it be offline for this long is simply unacceptable.”
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