UIF Ters

Image via: flickr

UIF Ters: Risk mitigation measures improve the system

The Department of Employment and Labour said the chance that fraudulent UIF Ters applications will be given the green light, have diminished.

UIF Ters

Image via: flickr

On Saturday 26 September, the Department of Employment and Labour released a statement saying that its risk mitigation measures are finally starting to bear some fruit. It said chances of fraudulent UIF Ters applications, or at the very least, claims that do not meet the required standards, have diminished considerably. 

The department said the system has already kicked out scores of undeserving beneficiaries as the added controls have kicked into gear. It has shown signs of a significant improvement in detecting and stopping potential fraudulent claims.

UIF TERS SYSTEM REJECTS FRAUDULENT AND INCORRECT APPLICATIONS 

As the payments of UIF Ters benefits resumed from 21 September 2020, the system has picked up and rejected 193 applications from deceased persons, 1 668 from government employees, two from incarcerated individuals and 1 968 applications for invalid identity documents.

“As you recall the UIF had to put a number of controls in place after the findings of the Auditor-General. This was amongst others the verification of identity documents with Home Affairs, verification of the database with the Department of Public Service and Administration, and the verification of incarcerated people with Department of Correctional Services and Justice,” said UIF Acting Commissioner Marsha Bronkhorst. 

Bronkhorst added that the fund is pleased at the instant positive results as a result of those changes and because of the co-operation the Department of Employment and Labour has received from some of its sister departments.

The interdepartmental cooperation will result in not only savings, but a smoother process in paying claims that the government put in place to mitigate the worst effects of lockdown.

SUSPENSION OF PAYMENTS 

The UIF had to suspend payments for two weeks in order to synchronise its database with various government departments and state entities.

Since Monday UIF Ters payments made for April, May and June amount to R1 billion rands from 26 312 valid applications. Previously the Fund warned that incomplete claims or claims where information is still outstanding from employers will not be automatically processed. The payments for July and August period will run on Saturday 26 September and they are expected to be in the beneficiary’s bank accounts on Monday 28 September.

“We still have about 138 452 undeclared employees whose April claims we could not process for payments, and we urge employers to make declarations either electronically on uFiling or by completing the UI-19 form to Covid19declarations@labour.gov.za in a case of less than 10 employees,” said Bronkhorst.