Durban - The Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) says it has been inundated with complaints connected to bogus employers who illegally use identity numbers of job seekers to register them with the fund.
The UIF says some of these fake employers have claimed for Covid-19 TERS benefits and, in some cases, unemployment benefits.
According to the UIF most complaints came up when people had applied for the Social Relief of Distress Grant (SRD) R350 grant from the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) and were declined, as the system picked up that they were already registered with the UIF.
“These are mainly learners/students that are recruited for learnerships and their studies are allegedly sponsored for R3 500 which was never paid to the learners but ended up being labelled as their monthly salary when claiming UIF,” said UIF commissioner Teboho Maruping.
Subsequent to receiving these complaints, the Department of Employment and Labour’s provincial Risk Management Units launched multiple investigations and have already identified some of the bogus employers.
“However, the fund is not at this stage able to mention them as investigations are still under way, but we can mention that some of these companies are in KwaZulu-Natal and others around the country. Furthermore, the fund has introduced the payment verification process to check validity and existence of employees, which will assist us in tracking down all the bogus employers,” said Maruping.
The fund says phase two of the Covid-19 TERS “follow the money project” will commence this month and all employers that have declared false employees will be prioritised as part of the project.
Maruping added that appointed audit firms will be conducting an end-to-end audit process for all the employees on the payroll of the company against all UIF claims made by the company. Any company found to be defrauding the UIF will be reported to the law enforcement agencies and criminal cases will be opened with the SAPS.
The public can report fraudulent activities at the nearest labour centre, or Fraud@labour.gov.za, or call the National Anti-Corruption Hotline on 0800 701 701.