South Africans queue to receive UIF payouts at the department of labour in Bellville, but rising unemployment is putting pressure on the fund. File Picture: Brendan Magaar / Independent Newspapers
With unemployment on the rise, the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) is pulling no punches and is cracking down on non-compliant companies.
The UIF said this week that it has managed to recoup over R100 million from exploitative employers who deducted contributions but did not pay them to the fund.
Essentially, these deceitful employers deduct the UIF contribution from their employees, but do not pay these funds to UIF.
The UIF commissioner Teboho Maruping told Newzroom Afrika that UIF investigators and inspectors will continue to visit companies and penalise dishonest employers.
“Just looking at July alone, we have received over 80 to 100 thousand (claim) applications for one month alone. We have already paid R1.4 billion in UIF claims that we have received so far,” Maruping said.
He explained that this figure illustrates that there’s potential for the numbers to pick up further, due to the increase in unemployment in the country.
Earlier this week, the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) for the second quarter (Q2) of 2024 noted that South Africa's official unemployment rate has increased from 32.9% in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024 to 33.5% in Q2.
While looking at the period from January to March of 2024, Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) noted that there were 8.2 million unemployed South Africans. This number has risen to 8.3 million in the period from April to June 2024.
The UIF currently has more than 2.4 million employers registered, accounting for 4.6 million employees.
The commissioner said UIF has the funds for the people that are contributing, but it will, in all honestly, not have enough to take care of increasing UIF dependants, as a result of SA's deteriorating jobs situation.
According to StatsSA, most of the job losses occurred in the formal non-agricultural sector, which lost 77, 000 jobs over the second quarter, outweighing the 48,000 jobs created in the informal sector.
The data showed that the number of discouraged job-seekers rose considerably by 147,000.
Job losses were also felt in the domestic trade sector, which shed a tremendous 111,000 jobs, or 3.2% over the quarter, reversing the 109,000 jobs created in Q1.
The agricultural sector lost 45,000 jobs, while the construction industry lost 11,000 jobs due to weak fixed investment activity.
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