Business Unity SA (Busa) has reiterated its call for the UIF to be placed under administration immediately because it is failing to pay benefits to workers, many of whom wait for months or even years to be paid.

Busa said the weak operations and lack of governance, accountability and transparency in the UIF underlined the need for active oversight, BusinessLIVE reports.

‘The operational inefficiencies and governance failures of the UIF are letting down hundreds of thousands of workers, many of whom are now facing a festive season without any income. The UIF is failing in its primary function – paying unemployment benefits – and must be placed under administration with immediate effect,’ the business organisation said on Friday.

‘It is now almost exactly a year since the initial calls by organised business and labour for the UIF to be placed under administration. Despite promises of a major overhaul by the new Minister of Employment & Labour, Nomakhosazana Meth, nothing has changed,’ Busa representative on Nedlac Jonathan Goldberg said.

Busa said the inefficiencies at the UIF were compounded this year by a legal wrangle that left the uFiling and the UIF app offline for several weeks.

The recent addition of new types of leave for employees, to be paid by the UIF, further burdened a system that is already operationally weak.

Busa referred to reports that the UIF had allocated R26bn to labour activation programmes of ‘dubious origin and impact’ while it continued to deny benefits to workers who contributed to the fund.

Busa’s acting director for social policy, Sanelisiwe Jantjies, noted Stats SA data showed about 500 000 more people joined the ranks of the unemployed in the first six months of 2024.

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