Dear Portfolio Committee on Employment and Labour,

I live in Gauteng.

I was dismissed from my previous employment in November 2020. After one day of receiving the outcome of my appeal hearing, I applied for UIF benefits via the ufiling web portal on 25-Nov-2020.
All the documents were submitted as per the link provided by the UIF Centre

On the 25-March-2021 the ufiling portal was updated to state "Completed by Assessor" –

What followed was numerous emails where I asked what the progress is, - Each time I spoke with a UIF agent they say it will be escalated and I need to phone back in two weeks. The ufiling later introduced a ticket reference system.

Ticket after ticket was closed with no feedback - One of the feedback I received is that a document was outstanding about my banking details, this was immediately sent. The Ticket thereafter are simply closed with no action taken and thereafter one must open yet another ticket and so the process continues.

The last feedback I received is that I did not apply for benefits in time according to the rules, yet I tried to explain that I applied within a day of my dismissal. I have since received yet another rejection stating that I did not apply on time for my benefits, yet I applied within 5 days.

I also escalated thy queries and complaint to "uifcomplaints@labour.gov.za" on numerous occasions before with no response whatsoever.

I have yet not received any payout from UIF since my first claim in November 2020. The ticket system UIF introduced was used mainly in 2022 for reference and history. I will gladly supply a timeline of all correspondence with the UIF centre since 2020

The ticket system seems flawed, as every time I try to request feedback on a ticket a new one gets generated, or alternatively when a ticket is generated you would get a "First Reminder" on the same day already.

I am a father of two and a husband that need to provide for his family, I have contributed over 20 years of my working life to the UIF – I have complied with all the requests and the documents the UIF needed to fulfil my case – but still nothing -

I am really at a cross road and call after call, email after email is simply ignored. What am I still left to do – I tried to log so many tickets, with just no results, phoned so many times, where the consultants only have to say they apologise on the behalf of the Department and that they will escalate the matter, and once again - silence.

PLEASE ASSIST