The new round of Temporary Employer-Employee Relief Scheme (TERS) payments for industries that can't operate fully during the Level 4 lockdown will now be made directly to workers in an effort to avoid fraud by "unscrupulous employers".
While employers are still be expected to claim from the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) on their workers’ behalf from Monday, this time around payment will be directly into employees’ bank accounts – "unless otherwise decided at the discretion of the UIF Commissioner", the fund said in a statement
"It is therefore crucial for employers to provide valid and accurate details of their employees including identity document numbers and valid bank accounts," acting UIF commissioner Mzie Yawa said.
The UIF said that in instances where workers don’t have accounts or there are issues in paying them directly, employers must provide proof and "funds may be paid into the employer’s account at the UIF’s discretion".
"We have learnt the lesson from the previous phases that some unscrupulous employers did not advance the funds to their employees and it is for that reason that we have opted for this mode of payment,” Yawa said.
“As a result of the non-payment of workers, the UIF and the entire department were inundated with a lot of complaints as workers could see in the system that funds had been released but had not been paid by their employers who kept the Covid TERS funds for themselves.”
Successful claims will start to be paid out from 26 July - almost a month after Level 4 was first announced.
Restaurants were not allowed to offer sit-down meals for the first two weeks of July, and gyms and fitness centres had to close their doors. These industries were later allowed to reopen. But night clubs, casinos, taverns and shebeens (except for food deliveries and takeaways), conferencing, exhibition and entertainment facilities, theatres, cinemas as well as museums, libraries, archives and galleries were forced to close from 28 June.
From last year to the early months of 2021, the TERS relief scheme has paid out more than R60 billion to 5.5 million workers around the country.