Be prepared to wait a year for the payment of your unemployment insurance, to fill in the same forms carefully and submit them more than once, to wait up to 50 minutes before the call centre answers. And you will have to wait 32 days before you can ask again how your claim is progressing.
This is the same frustrating story from several discouraged people who are waiting for payments from the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) after losing their jobs, retiring or submitting maternity leave claims.
You just have to wait. We have to wait, so you also have to waitAdri Kitshoff-Botha, a well-known figure in the industry, enquired for the umpteenth time this week after she submitted a claim after her retirement in October last year.
The reply: “You just have to wait. We have to wait, so you also have to wait.”
Riana du Preez, who worked for an auditing firm, was retrenched in August last year due to the effects of Covid-19. She applied for unemployment insurance in September after the system initially rejected her.
According to Du Preez, she only received payment 11 months later.
Despite her fear of Covid-19, she stood in the queue at the department of labour’s head office in Pretoria twice for more than three hours, but in vain.
The first time, she heard that the date on a letter from her former employer differed by one day from the date on the UI-19 form (the form with a list of employees that employers must submit to the Department by the 7th of each month) that she stated on the claim. She could only return 32 days later with the correct dates.
A previous agency that helped her had such difficulty getting any feedback that they gave upThe second time, when she finally reached the counter, Du Preez was told that the signature on the new UI-19 form differed from that on the service certificate. After this, she enlisted the help of an agency, but it still took months before she received her money.
Helen Nel, owner of Malaika Human Capital Consultants in Pretoria, tells of a client who came for help in August because she had been waiting for her maternity leave benefits from the UIF since December 2019.
“A previous agency that helped her had such difficulty getting any feedback that they gave up,” Nel says.
Another client who was retrenched had his claim delayed because the employer did not terminate his employment and he was therefore not unemployed according to the department’s system.
According to Nel, this was corrected and all the documents were submitted, but almost a year later the UIF wanted exactly the same documents again.
She says it often happens that claims are already with the paymaster, which means they should be paid soon, but then they are “cancelled and you have to download the necessary documents from scratch again”.
She finds that different officials in the department call clients and ask for the same documents. It also does not seem as if anyone ever gets a response when a complaint is emailed.
The UIF said on Wednesday morning that it would “do our best” to answer City Press sister publication Rapport’s queries, but had still not responded by Friday afternoon.
Makhosonke Buthelezi, spokesperson for the UIF, did tell RSG Geldsake in August that the processing of claims would be delayed if certain documents or information were missing. Often there are errors with employers’ UI-19 forms that are not the UIF’s fault.
Many online applicants forget their passwords and to correct them, you have to provide certain information to the call centre. At the time, the centre was overwhelmed by Temporary Employer-Employee Relief Scheme enquiries for payouts to help workers not to lose their jobs during the pandemic.
The UIF’s workload has also been increased because it has to help with payments to workers affected by the unrest in July.
One of the agents told Rapport that since claims were processed at the office closest to where the applicants were, and no longer at the head office, things were going slightly better. In the last few weeks, 300 of her claims have been processed.
Frustrated applicants say you quickly learn the messages or replies that the claim has been forwarded for review or payment, or that you will receive an email about progress, are nice words that mean very little.
You happen to find out if something is wrong with your application, says Kitshoff-Botha.
An agent who deals with UIF claims on behalf of clients says that it is difficult for people who submit their own applications to know which documents need to be loaded. There is no communication from the UIF if something is missing or wrong.
Kitshoff-Botha says she was informed by email on February 24 that her application (with all the necessary documents this time, she thought) had been received and was being processed.
On March 9, she was told the application had been processed and she would “soon” receive an SMS when the money was paid over – only to hear on March 19 that the documents from a former employer were outstanding.
By June 14, she had still heard nothing. “I called and was told they had been using a new system since January and that the link where I uploaded all my documents was no longer working. I had to resend everything by email, but no one could give me the email address.”
In mid-July, she received an email saying her documents had been received. If she had not heard anything within two weeks, she should follow up on the email, it said.
And then on August 26, she was informed that the salary schedule she had submitted was not on the right form. She corrected that but is still waiting.
Nel says it is unacceptable that things are so slow and it is frustrating for the customers who need the money urgently. “People are desperate. We try to help, but there are endless problems.”
