The Labour Department streamlines some of its processes to reduce queueing during Covid-19.
The Department of Employment and Labour is relaxing some of its processes to avoid long queues at its centres amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Eastern Cape branches are the first to institute these changes, which will address service delivery issues and reduce the number of clients visiting Labour Department centres.
The large-scale shedding of jobs in the economy has led to clients submitting continuation forms, and a rise in the number of UIF enquiries. Those, as well as credit days and payment dates, have all been acknowledged as contributors to long queues, which could accelerate the spread of Covid-19.
To reduce the bureaucracy and shorten queues at offices, the UIF will now deal directly with retrenching employers for the collection of documents and processing of employee applications.
Recipients of unemployment benefits are not expected to report to the department on a monthly basis, but to rather sign a continuation form and be paid by the UIF as per pay sheet, using statistics of the previous month.
The department will communicate via SMS to inform clients of the status of their application and the UIF will also implement an Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) functionality which will enable clients to follow-up on their claims from the end of January 2021.
Eastern Cape Chief Director Provincial Operations, Nomfundo Douw-Jack, said: “Occupational health and safety remains the core business of the department. In protecting both employees and clients, the department will put the necessary measures in place to reduce the spread of Coronavirus by allowing claims to be paid without the mandatory source documents, pending that everything is verified and correct.”
