The Citizen reports that parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa), joined by the Portfolio Committee on Employment and Labour, conducted an oversight visit on Friday to the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF).
Scopa chairperson Mkhuleko Hlengwa reported that the committee was concerned about the lack of human capacity at the UIF, particularly at the call centre, which was where e-mails, online applications and calls from the public were processed. “Scopa was informed the call centre has a backlog of 444,000 e-mails from the public with only eight call centre agents to attend to those e-mails,” Hlengwa pointed out. Earlier this year, the UIF introduced the Covid-19 Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (Ters) to compensate employees who found themselves unemployed during the lockdown. But, a Randburg resident is one of the thousands of retrenched and unemployed people without an income. “I am still waiting for my UIF benefits after being retrenched in June,” said DJ le Grange. He reported that after a long and frustrating process, he was chased away from UIF offices due to a “corona scare” and was told to file an online application. “My online application was completed by an assessor on 30 July. Yet no payments have been made,” Le Grange lamented. For the past three weeks, he has been trying to contact the online help desk without any luck.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Marizka Coetzer at The Citizen
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