The Unemployment Insurance Fund’s online services have been down for weeks. And a court interdict is preventing a new service provider from stepping in.

UIF’s director for communications, Trevor Hattingh, said the fund’s previous service provider has been the “biggest headache” during its 19 years of service.

On Monday, employment & labour minister Nomakhosazana Meth announced the temporary disruption of UIF online platforms, including uFiling, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, Virtual Office and the UIF Covid-19 Ters systems.

“On 30 August 2024, the Pretoria high court handed down a judgment on the matter of a service provider that rendered online portal services of UIF. The court issued an interim interdict preventing, with immediate effect, the new service provider from rendering services for the UIF online portal,” read the statement.

Hattingh said the contract with the previous service provider ended on 18 August. Instead of renewing the contract, the UIF sought the services of a new contractor.

“The former service provider is alleging in their court papers, among other things, that without their services we would not be able to pay South Africans,” said Hattingh.

uFiling

“The [old service provider] says that without their system – the uFiling portal — we would not be able to capture, adjudicate and pay people. But the payment and adjudication system is separate from their uFiling system. So, they lied in their papers. This is all a tactic to create a panic in South Africa,” said Hattingh.

The old service provider had also asked to be granted an extension, he said.

GroundUp has not had an opportunity yet to investigate Hattingh’s claims. It also remains unclear to us why the system was down weeks before the court interdict.

According to Hattingh, the biggest issue they’ve had has been with uFiling, which is linked to the Virtual Office system.

Read: UIF launches zero-rated app and USSD platform

“These are both offline now. These are the systems that came with the former service provider that has interdicted us. They have been providing us with online maintenance support for 19 years. And for 19 years our people have been frustrated; for 19 years we have had the biggest headache,” said Hattingh.

On Thursday, the uFiling homepage still had a “scheduled maintenance” message up, alerting users that the system is offline and advising them to visit their “nearest labour centre to access UIF services”.

“Why would a service provider whose contract is coming to an end, come and force us? We have had enough problems. We don’t want [the old service provider] anymore. We’ve gone through an open tender which has been through the necessary processes. They applied together with other service providers and someone else got the job this time around,” said Hattingh.

Despite the online system being offline, Hattingh said provisions had been made to ensure “all hands on decks” at all labour offices.

The labour office on Plein Street in Cape Town was busier than usual on Wednesday. We saw people being ushered to stand in three lines. One line had about 30 women holding small babies, some wrapped in thick blankets. A second line was for returning claimants, and the third had about 45 first-time claimants.

Sinazo Vele, from Khayelitsha, was holding her three-month-old daughter. She was on maternity leave and was there to claim her UIF.

“I got here around 11am, but it looks like the queues are moving swiftly, so I do not anticipate that I will be standing here for a long time,” said Vele.

Inside the office, the queues of people were orderly, with some claimants sitting on benches. Most of the service points had staff.

Hattingh said that where needed, they were considering extending working hours at some of the department’s 126 labour centres across the country to ensure that people are helped.

‘Blessing in disguise’

“This uFiling was so complicated that now that it’s not there, we are operating so much better. Maybe this whole thing was a blessing in disguise,” said Hattingh.

He said a team had been tasked to work on the uFiling system to get the portal operating as soon as possible.