Fresh from the Department of Labour in terms of the Covid-19 TERS Benefit Fund

Challenges are what make life interesting. Overcoming them is what makes them meaningful.

The TERS UIF Benefit website is ever evolving.

The UIF Commissioner Team addressed various difficulties we are facing with the TERS UIF Benefit Website this afternoon.

• The Foreign National debacle is still ongoing as the system is not yet accommodating employees without a legit 13-digit bar-coded ID number, linked to their employer's UIF Registration number.
  The UIF Commissioner confirmed that they are working closely with the SARS database to attempt to resolve these validation issues, so that these individuals may also benefit from the Fund.
  
  
• Currently, the system only addresses the National Lockdown Level 5 timeframe. (i.e. 27 March 2020 to 30 April 2020). This is clearly a reason for great concern, as we are entering the second week of May 2020.
  The UIF Commissioner confirmed that they are diligently working around the clock to finish the applications still streaming in by the second. They aim to be able to open the 31 days period (from 1 May 2020 to 31 May 2020) as soon as 15 May 2020. This leaves us with a short time span to submit April claims.
  
  
• More than 10 000 queries relating to pay-outs, non-pay-outs, rejections, and other obstacles have been lodged.
  The Commissioner confirmed that the support e-mail address, i.e. Covid19postpaymentenquiries@labour.gov.za, are being attended to as sufficiently as possible.
  Additional TERS agents are employed to deal with these.
  
  
• It was emphasised that the signed Acknowledgement & Acceptance document, including proof of payments to individuals, must be forwarded to the Employer Payments Return e-mail address, i.e. Covid19UIFemployerPaymentsReturns@labour.gov.za. 
  In my opinion, we need to have this part of the process automated, by way of upload to the TERS UIF site. This will relief some pressure to the agents working around the clock to finalise the level 5 timeframe claims.

I want to leave you with this thought, as the sun sets over South Africa, on #LockDownDay41:

"Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition (such as lifting weights), we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity." - Stephen Covey.