Dear Portfolio Committee on Employment and Labour,

I am really Astonished by the service I receive from the Labour Department. I applied for UIF benefits and it's been a complete nightmare. From the time of submitting the online application to the chase of feedback. It's nearly 3 months already with no movement and many escalations. With managers not returning your calls and staff simply saying there's nothing we can do.

This is really unacceptable and my circumstances does not allow me to wait for lazy individuals to perform their daily tasks. I cannot work at the moment and I am in need of the UIF money to survive. With a high risk pregnancy and companies denying employment due to Covid and risks involved. Changes to the UIF system has caused such a delay on the claim made and everyone tells you something different.

I call in each and every day chasing feedback only to be told I'm sorry. What is the point of unemployment benefits if you cannot utilize thos service effectively. No advisor is going the extra mile and the online service is suppose to make things easier and better but it's just simply horrible. I am disgusted and outraged by the service and the amount of times I hear I'm sorry there is nothing we can do for you. Let me take your details and get our admin team to call you back and this never happens.

We are all forced in circumstances that are unpleasant but if advisors and managers spend more time on getting issues resolved and keeping to promises made then there would not be such a high call volume and hopefully more time to process claims rather than paying a salary to an advisor who answers the calls "sorry, I cannot help you". And these are 5 min calls!!! Spend more time with the caller to resolve the query rather than long holds for nothing and managers who are never around.

I cannot keep chasing after a claim the way I do. I'm extremely dissatisfied at this service. Sad part is many has no choice and we are forced to utilize this service to survive as far as we possibly can.

What and who protects us from this?