The Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) has introduced a new regime to verify banking details of beneficiaries of COVID-19 Temporary Employee Relief Scheme (TERS).
The UIF said in a statement, the introduction of the new safety and security changes meant the fund had to delay payments.
However, over the weekend, it resumed payments and disbursed R372-million of COVID-19 TERS benefit claims.
UIF Commissioner, Teboho Maruping, said as part of the new control measures, the Fund has also introduced a new rule to the system that requires applicants to insert either the Enterprise number (CK/CIPC) or the ID number of the bank account holder in the TERS Online portal, in order to further verify banking details against the authorized claimant.
“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,” Maruping said.
He 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 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.
