Dear CEO Members
On the 02nd of July 2020, Makhosonke Buthelezi the Director of UIF Communication and Marketing indicated that the Unemployment Insurance Fund Commissioner Teboho Maruping stated that the Fund would continue to accept and process Covid-19 TERS claims submitted for April, May and June 2020 as per the directive issued by Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi on the 26th of March 2020.
This directive established the Covid-19 TERS benefits to last for a period of three months, which means claims submitted for a period within the three months will be processed and paid.
The Commissioner stated that “Although June was the last month for the Covid-19 TERS benefits as per the directive, the UIF will continue to process and pay claims submitted for this period until the cut-off date is determined. However, they will not accept claims submitted for July onwards as that falls outside of the time period stipulated in the directive for the Covid-19 TERS benefits”.
Commissioner Teboho Maruping also indicated that while the Fund will accept the claims for the determined period, please note that at the moment the UIF department was experiencing some technical glitches with the opening of the system for June submissions. The main problem was with the swapping of employer profiles when users try to submit claims, which causes a potential security breach.
The department initially opened the system for June application on the 23rd of June 2020, and they aimed to start making the first payments on the 25th of June to ensure that employees do not wait too long for their salaries. Unfortunately, the UIF department experienced problems with the swapping of user-profiles, and they immediately shut it down for June and rolled back to May to fix the problem.
The system was deployed again on the 24th of June, but the problem persisted, and IT engineers have ultimately increased the capacity of the system to be able to simultaneously process claims for April, May and June. The Commissioner further stated that the good thing is that the department data is safe and will ultimately be able to finalise the claims and pay monies due to employees once the technical issue has been resolved.
Please note that Commissioner Teboho Maruping said the UIF department would make sure that the system is completely stable before re-opening for June applications.
The Unemployment Insurance Fund wish to apologise to employers and employees for further delays, and they are working around the clock to fix the problem, and anticipate complete testing by Friday the 03rd of July 2020 so that the system can open again over the weekend if everything goes according to plan.
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Regards,
CEO Collective Bargaining Team