Payments for the Unemployment Insurance Fund’s (UIF) Temporary Employment Relief System (Ters) relief for workers have resumed after being suspended due to fraudulent activities.
Yesterday the business community was up in arms after news broke out that the Ters payment system had been suspended after the auditor-general (AG) raised red flags of fraud. The AG had found that prisoners and deceased people had been paid through the system.
But UIF commissioner Teboho Maruping said the suspension of payments was just a 24-hour action necessitated by “control deficiencies”.
“This is the usual step whereby if the UIF picks up problems, whether in relation to governance or to further stress-test and enhance the system, the payments get suspended to deal with the matter at hand.
“As part of a wider Covid-19 audit in state organs, the UIF was also subjected to an audit by the Auditor-General of SA. The AGSA team had observed some control deficiencies and anomalies in the system, which prompted us to delay payments to address them. The suspension of payments is not a new thing to the fund. We do it all the time when we pick up certain anomalies that increase risk or expose us to potential fraud,” said Maruping.
Earlier, the SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci) warned that the suspension of Ters payment would lead to more businesses shutting down.
But the majority of South African businesses are small enterprises. They will not be in a position to survive without accessing any of the relief measures
“More businesses will shut down. The big listed businesses have surplus funding and can survive. But the majority of South African businesses are small enterprises. They will not be in a position to survive without accessing any of the relief measures,” Sacci chief executive Alan Mukoki said.
Millions of workers have survived by receiving Ters payments from the UIF as their employers could not pay their salaries due to the Covid-19 lockdown. The government announced this relief at the beginning of the lockdown as a measure to help people who had their salaries cut and some not having any income at all as most companies were closed.
This month, the UIF recorded R40bn in payments. A total of R9m payments were done to more than 700,000 companies. These companies would then pass the money on to their employees.
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