UIF implements new measures to prevent fraud

The Unemployment Insurance Fund’s Covid-19 Temporary Employee Relief Scheme has implemented a new set of regulations to prevent fraud.

Applicants will now be required to enter their Enterprise number (CK/CIPC) or the ID number of the band account holder in the TERS Online portal. The new control measures will further verify the banking details against the claimant.

Teboho Maruping, UIF Commissioner says that these measures are critical to ensuring applicants receive their funds.

“This requirement which may seem onerous is critical to ensure banking details are verified before any TERS payment is authorized. Failure to populate the system properly will unfortunately lead to more delays in the payment process.”

As a result of the introduction of new measures, payments out of the fund were delayed but have now resumed.

According to a statement by the UIF over the past weekend, R372-million of Covid-19 TERS benefit claims were released.

Maruping explains that the stringent measures are a result of numerous fraud complaints that applicants were changing the banking details of their companies and inserting their own instead.

“This situation has created a need for us to do an upfront account verification and validation before the payment is made, and we expect this to increase our turnaround time by two days as the accounts are verified and validated to ensure that fraud at the company level is eliminated and reduced as far as possible. We cannot overemphasize how important it is for companies to provide correct information that can be validated and verified with the banks so that there are no delays with the payment,” said Maruping.

A reported 78 283 employees have benefited from the fund from claims made in April and May as their banking details passed the verification process.

Since April, the fund says that it has paid up to R1-billion directly into the bank accounts of 238 086 employees but direct payments to employees have not been impacted by the new security and verification measures.

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Featured image: KarelienKriel via Pixabay