The Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) has introduced new stringent controls to verify banking details of recipients to stop criminals from accessing the COVID-19 Temporary Employee Relief Scheme.
As part of the new control measures, the Fund has also introduced a new rule to the system that requires applicants to insert either their enterprise number (CK/CIPC) or the ID number of the bank account holder in the TERS Online portal.
This has been introduced in order to further verify banking details against the authorised claimant.
“This requirement which may seem onerous is critical to ensure banking details are verified before any TERS payment is authorised. Failure to populate the system properly will unfortunately lead to more delays in the payment process,” said UIF Commissioner Teboho Maruping.
Fighting fraud
The Commissioner added that the Fund has been at the receiving end of fraud complaints after it emerged that certain individuals managed to change banking details of their companies and inserted their own.
“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 company level is eliminated and reduced as far as possible.”
“We cannot overemphasise 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.
The new changes come on the back of the Fund having paid up to R 1 billion directly into the bank accounts of 238 086 employees since April 2020. Direct payments to employees have not been affected by the new measures. ñ SAnews.gov.za
DID YOU KNOW?
To date since April 16, the UIF has paid just under R30 billion covering 6 789 695 workers from 539 953 employers?
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