The Citizen writes that becoming a new mother is stressful enough, but imagine giving birth in a pandemic and waiting eight months for the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) to make a payout.
Liesie Pretorius from Pretoria West has been struggling that long to get her UIF payment after giving birth to a girl in November last year. She said this was despite her UIF contribution having been paid each month. Pretorius has to wait months for her claim to be paid out, which was very difficult because she cannot even afford medical bills. “I have tried calling several times, and found there were days they did not answer,” she indicated. She phoned in April, May, June, and this month and still got no answer, and “when they do eventually answer it was always the same story”. “They will give a ticket log about my request and promise to give me feedback, only for me to wait two weeks and still get no feedback,” she claimed. Pretorius initially used a UIF claim service that filed the claim on her behalf. A second agent informed her the documents hadn’t been filed to the system yet. Things went from bad to worse when she was informed that the assessor originally made a mistake on the system and uploaded her claim as a miscarriage. Pretorius is waiting for her claim to be reassessed. When she phoned, she was told a claim takes 35 working days to be reprocessed. By Wednesday, the system was still indicating Pretorius had had a miscarriage.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Marizka Coetzer at The Citizen
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page