COSATU raises concerns over UIF’s lack of internal controls

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has raised concerns over the Unemployment Insurance Fund’s (UIF) lack of internal controls.

This after the Special Investigative Unit (SIU) revealed that the UIF paid out about R57-billion in fraudulent payments to government employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The SIU was giving an update in Parliament today on the status of its investigations on the Department of Employment and Labour, UIF and TERS.

COSATU parliamentary coordinator Matthew Parks says they have long been calling for a modernised and cleansed UIF that serves workers and is free of looting.

“The UIF systems are very inefficient, so the consequence of that is that it enables a space for corruption, for fraud to take place, sometimes internally by people who work at the UIF.

Sometimes by external persons, like businesses for example, commit fraud as well, where they would submit claims on behalf of workers and never pay that money to the workers. But the other consequence of the inefficient, archaic, outdated IT systems of the UIF is that when workers apply for the funds, they struggle to access them.

It takes days and days when employers want to register workers for the UIF, and they often struggle to as well because the system is so inefficient.”

Acting SIU National Investigating officer, Zodwa Xesibe, said more than 6000 government employees across the provinces who were implicated are under investigation.

“The ad hoc matters that fell within the ambit of the proclamation, they are currently being investigated by different provinces. The investigation into 1,100 entities that claimed for TERS benefits with the potential recovery of R7.2 billion is now commencing. This is the data we extracted by the SIU through our product division.”