- UIF claims disappearing into void,
- Minister Meth must account,
- DA demands outdated UIF portal be closed.
The DA has written to the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Employment and Labour to request that the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) and Minister of Employment and Labour appear before Parliament to account for the non-functional UIF portal failures and to explain why corrective action was not taken sooner.
This is because the UIF has left its old online claims system available to the public for years, despite no longer processing applications submitted through this outdated portal. This has created widespread confusion among claimants seeking urgent financial relief.
Applications via this portal are unmonitored and invalid. South Africans submitting claims through this system are effectively sending applications into a void, with no indication that their submissions will be processed.
Despite being aware that unemployed South Africans were using this portal, and would thus not receive the benefits they are entitled to, the UIF appears to have done nothing to fix the issue or properly alert the public that the portal was no longer operational.
Thousands of South Africans have thus gone without UIF payments for months, needlessly and due to a failure on the UIF’s part at a time when many households are already under severe financial strain and relying on UIF support to survive.
We expect the UIF to give answers to the questions:
– How long has the old system not been in use;
– how many applications have been made through the old system;
– when the UIF will disable the invalid portal;
– and how it will reach out to claimants who have mistakenly used an invalid portal due to the UIF’s own failures.
In addition, the Minister must account for her lack of action on this matter and the absence of consequences for the UIF’s poor performance. The entity continues to be rudderless, and the Minister has made no announcement of how she intends to set it back on course after the dismissal of the former Commissioner for misconduct.
The DA believes affected claimants deserve urgent clarity and immediate intervention to ensure that no further applications are lost through an invalid system.
Parliament cannot allow this negligence and administrative failures to continue depriving unemployed South Africans of the support they are legally entitled to receive.