Unemployed but still Dignified and My Life Does Matter

UIF RELIEF CLAIMS SUPPORT Following my termination of employment last year, I have been through some challenging trials in applying for UIF from our UIF society which is a debilitating and demoralising experience and deters a prospective claimant from applying for a claim. I went to the local UIF offices and queued for approx. eight hours i.e. from 6:00 to 14:00 only to be told that I am not in possession of all the information criteria to make an application and was given a return date which was approx. four weeks to return the official required documentation. In that period I've witnessed some persons who had been there on three prior occasions who still had not provided the prescribed returnable documents and appeared stuck in a bureaucratic loop. I feel it’s a travesty that the UIF institute do not gear the employers with the correct "Claim Procedure" together with the document criteria to accompany the claim. My anticipation was that I would receive 45% of the average remuneration of my last six months of employ. This was my understanding when I started working 47 years ago. I have on one other occasion app**** for unemployment relief and have received the then prescribed amount of 45%. To my surprise there is now a cap on your earnings limited to R17712.00 and your relief is calculated as a formulated percentage of your permissible day rate with the resultant value of your potential relief to lay between a low of 38% and a high of 60% of your average monthly remuneration or the UIF prescribed capped value, whichever is the lesser. Note the premium paid to this fund does not have bearing on the relief this fund generates. While the formula is available to the general public on the internet website, the actual relief payment due and how the formula has been app****, has to be investigated and calculated by the applicant himself and he will be non the wiser if he, in general does not have access, to the tools and application know how. Approx. six weeks after my approved application, I received my first relief payment which was larger than anticipated as it had included back pay from the date of application. This was appreciated, but thereafter amounts fluctuated and was a staggering low most recently. Furthermore the procedure was that you filled out a claim renewal form on prescribed dates decided by the UIF office where you registered. These periods ranged from 28 to 35 days in my experience. Payments are effected by EFT into your official bank account within 21 days thereafter. A few months back we were advised to apply for future payments online as the UIF is upgrading to take the pressure off these satellite offices. This is welcomed for taking away the schlep of having to queue for long periods from as early as 6:00 in the morning, only to be accommodated at around 8:00 for the earliest and should you have a query you are lucky to be accommodated that day. However I welcomed the opportunity to apply for my next claim on line but the site is not user friendly and after several attempts, I finally succeeded with my on line registration. My last payment was shockingly low which got me searching for answers. My enquiries yielded the computation of my relief payment however on the following, I have no answer as many sites offering assistance regarding, have disillusioned my trust, as they reference buttons giving access, which do not exist in the UIF official Site. These include: 1) My Claim Status 2) Amounts Received to date 2) Amount receivable on latest claim (which you could use to verify what you've received) 3) My Balance (what is the balance of funds still available to me ) 4) My return application date ( however you could count 28 days since you last claim date) I trust that Hello Peter can assist in making an improvement to our already miserable situation by getting The UIF to oblige us with a better service. Furthermore, note that the intention of this draft is not to offend, but to bring attention to the Operating Organisation, the plight of the Unemployed. Yours Sincerely