UIF explains COVID-19 TERS payments

The Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) has confirmed it will continue to accept and process COVID-19 TERS claims submitted for April, May and June.

However, the Fund will not be accepting and processing claims for July and onwards, said Fund Commissioner, Tebogo Maruping, in a statement.

The three-month relief was introduced by government in March.

“Although June was the last month for the COVID-19 TERS [Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme] benefits, as per the directive, the UIF will continue to process and pay claims submitted for this period until the cut-off date is determined.

“However, we will not accept claims submitted for July onwards, as that falls outside of the time period stipulated in the directive for the COVID-19 TERS benefits,” Maruping said.

The Commissioner said while the Fund will accept claims for the determined period, the Fund is currently experiencing minor technical glitches with the opening of the system for June submissions.

“The main problem is with the swapping of employer profiles when users try to submit claims, which causes a potential security breach.

“We initially opened the system for June applications on 23 June 2020, and our aim was to start making the first payments on 25 June to ensure that employees do not wait too long for their salaries.

“Unfortunately, we experienced problems with the swapping of user profiles and we immediately shut it down for June and rolled back to May to fix the problem.

“We deployed the system again on the 24th of June but the problem persisted and our IT engineers have ultimately increased the capacity of the system to be able to simultaneously process claims for April, May and June. The good thing is that the data is safe and we will ultimately be able to finalise the claims and pay monies due to employees once we have resolved the current issues,” said Maruping.

To resolve problems expeditiously, the Commissioner said the Fund has roped in external resources to help. However, the Fund will make sure that the system is completely stable before re-opening for June applications.

“I wish to apologise to employers and employees for the further delays. We are, however, working around the clock to fix the problem. We anticipate complete testing by Friday, so that we can open the system again over the weekend if everything goes according to plan,” Maruping said.