Employer troubles with submitting UIF declarations

I have been battling for years with the Department of Labour in properly trying to record employee information for UIF purposes. A few months ago the U-filing website (used for the purpose of submitting UIF declarations online) was given a complete make-over, making the monthly declaring process a brand new experience. The website itself gives little guidance on how to go about things on the new site in relation to switching from the old to new way of submitting monthly declarations. It only guides you how to start from scratch, as if you are a first time employer submitting new declarations.

Monday morning, in my latest attempt to contact the Dept, I went onto the Dept of Labour's website to check the 'contacts' page for the most up-to-date information. The page would not load and generated an error message. This happened repeatedly throughout the morning as I tried to visit the page. Monday and Tuesday I tried contacting the Dept via the U-filing helpline number given on the U-filing website, with no success of getting through yet (yesterday I hung up after holding for 45 mins). This morning I logged into the U-filing site again to check my declarations' status. This time, a few of the historical returns seemed to have been populated, but most of the historical periods were not. Does this mean the Dept is slowly starting to transfer information from the old system to the new system? Surely the Department could provide a notice to the public to inform us what is happening?

In the two months post the revamped u-filing website going live, I was unable to submit UIF declarations on time due to me not being able to obtain assistance from the Department and also due to technical issues of trying to log in on U-filing. I tried calling U-filing technical support on numerous occasions over the two months. Many times the line just went dead or a recording would say they are not operating between certain interchangeable hours of the day. Sometimes when I'd call, the same recording would play, even though it was outside the 'non-operating' hours as mentioned in the recording, despite that, the line would still cut me off after the recording finished. The three times that I actually got through to a consultant over this period, it was only after having held on the line for 30 to 45 minutes. One of the three times, the consultant not able to address my query, became agitated and put the phone down on me. Another time, the consultant after listening to my query, put me on hold and then the line went dead.

Many years back when I used to submit UIF returns manually by fax, I was made to understand by a call center consultant that, if one is submitting PAYE returns via SARS e-filing (on which one declares the monthly UIF amount and makes payment), one did not need to submit UIF returns to the Department of Labour each and every month, but rather only when there is a change in salary or employees' appointments or terminations. I worked accordingly for many years, on similar advice received from accountants/auditors until eventually the submission by fax became increasingly more difficult, the only time the fax would successfully transmit is if I'd send it over a weekend or outside office hours. Then eventually it became impossible to get through on the fax numbers at all... even outside office hours.

Once in a while I would receive in the post a confirmation letter that the Dept had recorded the change. This was erratic and often incorrect and I did not always receive such confirmation letters when I submitted changes. I became concerned that perhaps all information was not recorded correctly at which point I decided to submit a 'bulk' information sheet, having recaptured all monthly return information for all the years dating back to the commencement of employment of all employees (1999). At that point I had received guidance from a Dept of Labour call center consultant who emailed me the template for loading bulk information and also provided me with an email address to where to send the information. I completed the information and submitted it to the Dept by email but heard nothing back. Round about the same time I had decided to start submitting returns every month via U-filing, even if there are no changes. The old U-filing website was relatively user-friendly and I managed to submit on time each month, only having to deal with the system crashing during the busy submission periods. When the new website came on line, this changed, as explained above.

Finally, after having fiddled around on the new website over a two month period I figured out how to submit returns again, but noticed that all old returns I had submitted online on the old website were not reflecting on the new system. When I called to ask about this I was eventually informed that this happened to all U-filing users and that we have to recapture all the information from the old periods again to reflect them on the new system. I found the 'bulk upload' button on the new site which provides an excel sheet template and example sheet to assist with this process. The template was now completely different to the template I had used and was given the previous time when I tried to resubmit information in bulk by email. This means I have to now recapture all information once again, into a new template to upload via the new website.

I am now in the process of trying to get through to a call center consultant who might be able to tell me whether the Dept actually has the historical information already and whether it is just a matter of not reflecting on the new system and to ask if I do actually need to reload all the information or if they are in the process of doing this. So far, it has been impossible to get through to anyone. I will continue trying.

We as the public and employers contributing to the fund need to be informed of what is happening behind closed doors at the Dept because, on the face of things, it is not looking good. If long standing contributing employees one day need to claim from the fund and they are told that they cannot due to information not having been recorded for them, this will negatively impact them. We as employers and employees do whatever we are supposed to do but what are we to do if the government is not fulfilling its obligations in the required processes to provide an enabling environment for us to comply? What legal recourse do prejudiced citizens have against non-performing government departments? As we all know, the Department of Labour is not the only Dept guilty of this.