UIF Problems encountered in practice with the legislation
Only employees with valid National ID numbers will be able to claim benefits without having to substantiate their identity, their contributions and their period of service.
Yet it is a fact of South African life that large numbers of workers, both RSA citizens and non- citizens, are not in possession of a National Identity number.
These employees are currently contributing to the fund, and yet will have difficulty in claiming their benefits.
Non-executive directors can receive remuneration for their services from a number of different employers.
If they work for more than 24 hours in each of these companies, then UIF must be calculated and submitted separately each month by each company for the same director against the same ID number.
- Can the director claim benefits against his contributions from one company if only that company dismisses him, or he is still regarded as being employed if he continues to supply services to the other companies?
- What happens if the director is a lady, and goes on maternity leave – can she claim benefits from all the companies?
Along the same lines as the above, a ‘non-permanent’ worker could work for more than 24 hours per month for a number of different employers in a month. Each employer must deduct and pay over UIF contributions for the same person.
What happens to that person’s right to claim benefits?
The old UIF legislation contained a clause which ‘deemed’ an employee to be unemployed for UIF purposes, while the employee was receiving benefits such as maternity, adoption or illness.
This clause has been removed from the new legislation, meaning that the employee will now accumulate benefit days for the period in which financial benefits were received!
Even worse, the employee who doesn’t receive cash remuneration during the benefit period, will probably still receive benefits such as employer contributions to medical aid, housing benefits, etc.
These benefits result in a taxable value on which a UIF contribution must be calculated and paid over, and which must be deducted from a payslip which has no cash earnings.
And of course, the (very low) remuneration value paid during this period will be used to determine the average remuneration over the last six months in the event of another claim for benefits?
These problems and many more have been submitted to UIF for their attention.
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