• The Department of Labour has increased the office hours for a number UIF centres across the country.
• This is after most of its important UIF online service channels have been offline for weeks.
• The channels went offline when a court order sought to block the department from hiring a new online service provider.

The online service channels for the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) are still not working after what is reportedly weeks of downtime. This has led to people looking to get services from the UIF head to in-person offices in larger numbers than usual.

South Africa’s Department of Labour announced earlier in September that a number of online UIF-related service platforms have been offline, including uFIling, the fund’s USSD, the UIF virtual office, and the UIF COVID-19 TERS system.

At the time, it said that a court order from the Pretoria High Court blocked a new service provider from operating the UIF online portals, and it was not evident then why exactly the court had blocked the service provider.

The department said that it was “anticipating that the disruption will result in increased volumes of clients at our service points. We therefore wish to sincerely apologise to our clients and stakeholders for the delays and any inconvenience emanating from the disruption of UIF online platforms.”

In 2020 alone, over 200 000 people signed up for the COVID-19 TERS fund, for which the online portal is down and has been for some time.

To try and help out with the long queues, the department says it is extending operating hours and launching other measures to make sure that employers continue complying as the uFiling system is down.

It says that now in-person UIF centres will remain open from 7:30 to 16:00 during September, in the following centres:

• “Eastern Cape Province – Gqeberha, East London and Qonce,
• KwaZulu-Natal – Pietermaritzburg and Richards Bay labour centre,
• Mpumalanga Province – Emalahleni, Secunda, Middleburg, Malelane and Mbombela labour centre,
• North West Province – Mahikeng, Potchefstroom, Lichtenburg, Klerksdorp, Vryburg, Christiana, Brits, Taung and Rustenburg labour centre,
• and in the Western Cape – Cape Town, Paarl, Mitchells Plain and Bellville.”

According to GroundUp, the UIF’s director of Communications, Trevor Hattingh, the previous service provider of the UIF’s online portal went to the High Court to interdict the fund from finding a new service provider for their online portals after the previous contract expired on 18th August.

“The [old service provider] says that without their system – the uFiling portal — we would not be able to capture, adjudicate and pay people. But the payment and adjudication system is separate from their uFiling system. So, they lied in their papers. This is all a tactic to create a panic in South Africa,” said Hattingh.

There are still some ways that employers and others can access online UIF services. For example, new employers can register for UIF through BizPortal, which you can access here.

“BizPortal is only for employer registration and will not be able to register employees. Employee registration can be undertaken at a nearby labour centre,” the department explains.

If you are an employer with an electronic payroll system and are looking to declare employees, you can do so by sending live payroll files to the Department of Labour directly via Declarations(at)Labour(dot)gov(dot)za.

For manual declarations, you can download the UI19 from here and then submit the form via email on uif(dot)declarations(at)labour(dot)gov(dot)za.