Durban — The Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) has tightened its grip on non-compliant employers in the road freight industry. This was revealed at the employer seminar for the road freight and logistics industry held at Radisson Blu Hotel in uMhlanga on Tuesday.
Smiso Nkosi, a senior official who represented UIF Commissioner Teboho Maruping, hosted the media, employers, and other stakeholders at the seminar, where employers were provided with updates on UIF developments, and compliance with the Unemployment Insurance Act rules that they have to follow.
Nkosi briefed the UIF’s main stakeholders – employers – on its “follow the money” project that will check every employer that received money during the Covid-19 pandemic from the Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (TERS).
“We are requesting employers to be prepared because we will verify each and every cent of Covid TERS. They will give us their documents and we advise them to indicate to us if they did not comply in advance,” he said.
He said that so far they had verified R30 billion out of the R65bn of TERS. He said they had detected 40 cases of fraud so far.
He said non-compliance included applying for someone who was not working or on maternity leave, and overstating salaries when applying.
The topics discussed also included the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act (Coida), the role of the Public Employment Service (PES) branch in the Department of Employment and Labour, the Labour Activation Programme (LAP), Inspection and Enforcement Services (IES) and the National Minimum Wage Act and operational challenges that have been a topical issue of companies that hire foreigners as drivers.
Kershnie Govender, a manager at Positive Freight Solutions, asked about compliance and the protection of employees and if the government had programmes for employees.
One of the panellists, director of Labour Migration Mantombi Bobani, said in South Africa every worker was treated the same. However, she highlighted the importance of hiring South Africans and allowing them to gain skills.
“I want to ask a question to employers if they did not get anyone from this country to drive those trucks? Again, if you remember in our government policies we state that if the company needs someone with critical skills, we grant them that permission. And they need to provide us with evidence that they are not intentionally excluding South Africans. Driving is not a scarce skill and it is not in the critical skills list for government,” she said.
Dedicated freight and trading manager Logan Nair said the conference was an eye-opener and he was touched the officials had acknowledged that their system was slow and that they would address that. He also said the protests over the hiring of foreign nationals as drivers had impacted companies and employers had become more conscious about who they employed and being compliant.
“I believe all the members of the Southern African Association of Freight Forwarders are very mindful of this. The general concession is to comply and have trained drivers. We are also looking at local drivers, whilst there are foreign drivers hired,” he said.
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