If you are one of the workers who has not received their Covid-19 TERS benefit payment from the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), take heart. This week, the UIF, an entity of the Department of Employment and Labour will be doing payment re-runs for outstanding claims for the period between April to 15 September 2020 periods.

The Fund has also started processing and paying claims to foreign nationals who were verified via the Department of Home Affairs and the South African Services (SARS) and meet all other verification processes.

These payments come on the back of a staggering R55.6 billion in 12.9 payments to millions of workers from 1.1 million applications that the Fund has disbursed since the first lockdown in March. This figure includes just over R2 billion paid to 491 410 foreign nationals from 95　834 applications by employers.　

"The Fund has been sporadically re-running claims for the previous months, but this time we have decided to recycle all claims to ensure that those that have updated declarations and discrepancies are paid when we re-run the payments. We have dedicated the entire week to re-run payments for a period between April to September 2020, and we shall repeat for all lockdown period on Saturday, 19 December to try clear the backlog as far as we possibly can so that beneficiaries will not suffer during this festive season," said the Acting Commissioner, Marsha Bronkhorst.

Payments for the 16 September to 15 October period have already commenced with R1 billion disbursed to 272　686 workers through 22　884 employer claims. Applications for this period close on 31 December 2020 and no further applications will be accepted.

As the festive season is underway Bronkhorst, says annual leave for all key personnel in Operations, ICT and Finance has been postponed in order to fast track the processing and payment of claims, including claims for normal UIF benefits. "Officials at senior management and those processing and paying claims will not be going on leave except for the mandatory shutdown period from 24 December 2020 to 1 January 2021, which is used for systems maintenance. The decision to postpone annual leave for some of our officials was not taken lightly, but is being implemented to ensure that we continue to process and pay claims to our beneficiaries to enable them to meet their financial obligations and support their families during the festive season," said Bronkhorst.

The Fund also advises employers who submitted Covid-19 TERS claims via CSV file for April to 15 September periods, and where "no employees" appears on the online portal, to assume that their CSV file was incorrectly formatted. As per agreement with social partners, applicants who attempted to upload prior to the closing dates, and whose attempt failed due to technical issues, are given a further opportunity to re-submit.　

The process to follow, to re-submit your claim data, is as follows: