The Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) has launched a crackdown on employers it believes defrauded it by using employee details to make Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (TERS) claims but failed to pay the monies to the workers.
The fund is enlisting the help of organised labour and on Wednesday met with Cosatu’s Gauteng chapter to find ways of holding culprits accountable.
UIF Commissioner Teboho Maruping says the institution is not acting on the basis of mere suspicion.
“We have reason to believe that such fraud has taken place but also we have evidence that has shown overtime that a number is of employers had claimed for employees that that they didn’t pay them their money. We took them to task.
“When we followed the money the follow the money auditors picked up some of these employers. We brought law enforcement agencies, We took them to court and we were successful. They’re arrested, some of them are serving up to 20 years and in prison,” said Maruping to on the sidelines of the meeting with Cosatu at Emperor’s Palace in Kempton Park.
Maruping said the involvement of organised labour will make it easy to identify affected employees and ultimately offending employers.
“When we engage with organised labour our view is ‘these are your members that are suffering at the hands of some of these employers and we believe this this engagement can take us far.
“Organised labour actually came with a brilliant solution and said Commissioner you can automate this process such that our members in the workplace can go onto the platform and check and it can show that my company applied for me for five thousand and only gave me two thousand or applied for they applied for five thousand then gave me the whole five thousand as a loan. We picked up a number of these cases and hence we’re taking this approach,” said Maruping.
Cosatu’s Gauteng Deputy Chairperson Thabang Sonyathi says fraudulent of TERS benefits by employers has left many workers in distress. He vowed the federation will , through its 21 affiliates, expose companies that helped themselves to the funds meant for workers who lost their jobs or had their income reduced as a result of the two year lockdown imposed by the government in March 2020 as part of a response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sonyathi said some employers misrepresented the funds as company loans to employees.
“Many of the people would have lost their livelihoods and families as they were unable to provide. Some of the people were given the monies as loans and are still paying back those loans so there has to be accountability,” he said.