Technical glitch on UIF website leads to further frustration

South Africans have recently expressed anger and frustration after having experienced seeming system glitches while trying to submit claims via the UIF’s online portal.

A raging Twitter-war followed. Some users had the following to say:

Good day. The website seems to be offline. Please confirm whether the department is aware of this? What is the cause? Regards pic.twitter.com/TRzgN65Djv

— Helene Eloff (@HeleneEloff) April 29, 2020

Your online services are a joke..forever offline!!!!

— Omar Ayob (@OmarMAyob) April 28, 2020

I have been sending numerous emails and calling the contact center..I keep getting this error on ufilling..Can someone please help me 😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/biRsgKzvAO

— FiggyN (@Figgy_N) April 28, 2020

There has since been some response from Mr Teboho Thejane, departmental spokesperson for the UIF.

He has offered an apology and said, “The technical challenge has been addressed.”

Thejane said there are instances where members of the public submit the wrong information and get locked out of the system. According to him they are also assisted.

“The system has a safety measure – the same as an automatic teller machine and even cell phone,” he added.

The technical glitch followed a press release on April 28 where UIF Commissioner Teboho Maruping said in its quest for continual improvement and to deliver efficiently and effectively to its customers, the UIF has tweaked its systems to ensure that more pertinent information is available on its online platform.

According to Maruping the enhancements have also ensured that the online systems for claims capturing, processing, and eventual payment have been stress-tested and came out tops with the overflow of applications that have been received.

The following upgrades were done to the system:

• Employers, employees and organised labour will now be able to see which companies have been paid. This is in respect to a number of queries where workers have been unable to determine if their companies have applied for, and received payment on their behalf from the Department of Employment and Labour Covid-19 TERS scheme. This relieves the overwhelmed call centre as information is available at one’s fingertips.
• Employers will be able to log and check the status of their claims
• Employers will also be able to see the schedule of the approved claim which shows how much is due to each employee. Again, employers have inundated the UIF with requests for information on the exact amounts for different employees, and
• Employers who do not know their UIF reference number but know their PAYE can now retrieve the UIF number by using their PAYE number.

These enhancements have seen the UIF paying just over R5-billion in combined normal and Covid-19 benefits since April 16 (R5 080 350 404.01).

The department urges employers to apply for relief on behalf of their employees. The figures paid to-date represent successful claims submitted by 72 221 employers.

However, claims by some 55 169 employers representing 361 557 workers are still in abeyance pending submission of further particulars by employers.

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