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A labor protest in the Northwest.
PHOTO: Gallo Images / Dino Lloyd
- The Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) has been looted by people, both inside and outside the organization, who illegally benefited from the money from the aid plan.
- In a report, ParliamentThe Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) found that adequate systems were lacking to ensure that money was paid to its rightful beneficiaries.
- Scopa also found that there was no proper verification of employer details.
Parliament’s financial watchdog has found that the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) system used for bank account confirmations was inadequate and details of employee salaries submitted for temporary benefit claims were not verified.
These findings were contained in a report from the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa), which must now be considered by the House.
Scopa on Tuesday considered and adopted the report that exposed the lack of protocols and inefficiencies with the benefit payment of the FIU’s Covid-19 Temporary Employment Relief Plan (TERS).
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The scheme was introduced amid massive job losses as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The acting FIU commissioner also acknowledged that the payments to SANDF members were due to a database not being updated to verify identification numbers. There was no verification of applicants representing employers. They were made incorrect system calculations of the TERS benefit payment for the first blackout period, “he said in his report.
“Scopa also discovered that there was no proper verification of employer details. The functionality of the system for bank confirmation of uploaded documents was inadequate and details of employee wages submitted for benefit claims were not verified.”
After a supervisory visit to the FIU, Scopa found several acting staff members in key positions.
“There was no staff training, lack of skills and low morale among staff. There was no real leadership setting the tone from above. The filing room was full of boxes stacked against the walls. A safe where documents were said The tender to be kept was openly accessible within the filing room, with the keys hanging carelessly in the key slot, “the report says.
Earlier this month, News24 reported that the dead, people too young to work, FIU employees and SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) beneficiaries looted nearly R120 million of the TERS benefit between April 1. and September 30.
Fifty-three applicants under the legal working age received a payment of R224 677.43, 113 “deceased” applicants obtained R441 144.34, while R129 242.64 were paid to 26 inmates.
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In October, the Minister of Labor and Employment, Thulas Nxesi, warned that the FIU was not a “money tree” with unlimited resources.
Nxesi said that the FIU had around R50 billion available.
Through TERS, around R49 billion in benefits had been disbursed in the form of more than 11 million payments since the start of the lockdown.
The committee also found that the FIU had distributed R24 billion in Covid-19 tax benefits, covering 330,000 employers “and benefiting various employees in an unprecedented way.”
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