More than six weeks ago, the online services of the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) went down.
The fund said it had made “groundbreaking progress” on alternative measures and expected to announce them “soon”.
Meanwhile, employers and employees across the country who relied on the service are dissatisfied and suffering severe inconvenience.
On August 23, Acting Judge Richard Mkabela granted an interim injunction in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria in a matter involving Internet Filing Ltd., which provided online portal services to the UIF.
As a result of this interim ban, the new service provider, AfriNova Digital, is no longer able to provide services for the UIF online portal.
Since then, the UIF online platforms, including uFiling, Unstructured Supplementary Services Data, Virtual Offices, and the UIF Covid-19 TERS system, have been frozen.
On July 11th, a service level agreement was signed between UIF and AfriNova, but the signing was not disclosed at Internet Filing's meeting with representatives from the Department of Employment and Labor on July 15th. There wasn't.
Internet Filing then began accepting emergency applications on August 13th.
AfriNova began work on August 19th.
Four days later, a preliminary injunction was granted stopping all work.
Justice Mukabela said the internet filing had a prima facie right to have the tender awarded fairly and argued that the award of the tender to Afrinova flaunted procurement regulations.
A week after the interim injunction was granted, UIF spokesperson Trevor Hatting said a team had been tasked with working on the uFiling system to get the portal up and running within about two weeks.
He acknowledged the “frustration” the fund had caused and said he was “truly sorry.”
“I would say we have made a breakthrough in terms of alternatives, which will be announced soon,” Hattingh said.
COSATU calls for intervention
The trade union COSATU called on Employment and Labor Minister Nomakozana Mesu to “intervene and take the necessary measures to make uFiling functional again.”
“The UIF is a contributory social security fund, and it is completely unacceptable for it to be suspended for such a long period of time,” he said.
On Tuesday, COSATU said that the UIF's extension of the opening hours of its centers to reduce workload “represents little change for employers who have relied on the uFiling platform to declare and pay UIF contributions on behalf of their employees. There was no such thing.”
“Companies are currently required to email a UI-19 form to each employee, resulting in a huge amount of paperwork. Alternatively, employers can contact their nearest UIF center. Visit, join the long lines that spiral out of the building, and do your best to get in before they cut you off and ask you to come back the next day.
COSATU parliamentary co-ordinator Matthew Parks told GroundUp: “Many of the UIF's problems are rooted in IT systems. Employers struggle to register staff, workers struggle to apply for funding, and domestic UIF “There's a line at the office like it's Election Day,” he said.
“Workers contribute to the UIF. The government is not contributing a penny. Workers have a right to the money and the government needs to manage it efficiently,” Parks said. .
Meanwhile, on 13 September, Minister Metz announced the precautionary suspension of UIF Commissioner Teboho Malpin, who is facing corruption charges related to a R5 billion transaction.
This article was first published by GroundUp
