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By IOL Reporter 
10h ago
Johannesburg – The Unemployment Insurance Fund will pay outstanding funds from the Temporary Employment Assistance Scheme (TERS) this week to millions of skilled workers nationwide, including validated foreign employees.
The FIU says it will pay outstanding claims for the period from April to September 2020 this week and has started to process payments also to foreign nationals that have been validated by the South African Department of Labor and Revenue Service (Sars).
Regarding the TERS claims for the September / October period, the FIU said that it had started the process of paying more than R1bn to more than 270,000 workers from more than 22,000 employers. He said that filings for this period would close on December 31 and there would be no further applications beyond this year.
In September, Labor Minister Thulas Nxesi announced the suspension of FIU commissioner Teboho Maruping and the entire administration due to allegations of fraud and mismanagement of Covid-19 relief funds after a report by the late Auditor General Kimi Makwetu highlighted a litany of possible fraudulent activities. in the use of aid funds both in the procurement processes and in TER disbursements by the FIU.
Acting FIU Commissioner Marsha Bronkhorst said the state agency had been re-executing pending payments for months.
“The fund has been repeating claims sporadically over the past months, but this time we have decided to recycle all claims to make sure those with up-to-date statements and discrepancies are paid when we re-execute payments.
“We have spent the entire week re-executing payments for a period between April and September 2020, and we will repeat the entire blackout period on Saturday, December 19 to try to clear the delay as much as possible so that recipients will not suffer during this holiday season, ”said Bronkhorst.
He said key staff in the operations, ICT and finance units had been postponed to allow the FIU to speed up payments.
“Senior management officials and those who process and pay claims will not go on vacation, except during the mandatory shutdown period from December 24, 2020 to January 1, 2021, which is used for maintenance of the systems.
“The decision to postpone annual leave for some of our staff members was not taken lightly, but is being implemented to ensure that we continue to process and pay claims to our beneficiaries so that they can meet their financial obligations and support their families during the festive season. Bronkhorst said.
Meanwhile, the FIU has warned companies that made Covid-19 TERS claims through a CSV file for the periods April to September 15, and where it appears “no employees” on the online portal, to assume that their CSV file has a wrong format.
Employers were asked to resubmit their claims with a complete Excel template for the period in question and to email the document to [email protected]
He said employers should ensure that the subject line of the email should clearly specify in the subject line, the period in question and asked for only one email attachment by email.
The FIU said it would then convert the file to CSV format, perform the necessary verifications and an audit of the application, before processing the application starting December 14.
To date, the FIU has paid R55.6 billion in 12.9 million payments to 1.1 million employer applications since March, including more than R2bn paid to more than 490,000 foreign employees.
MESS
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