Question NW2720 to the Minister of Employment and Labour
15 September 2023 - NW2720
Le Goff, Mr T to ask the Minister of Employment and Labour
(1) With regard to the (a) Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) and (b) COVID-19 Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (TERS) Programme, what total number of (i) claims for payments to be made to employees remain unprocessed and (ii) employees are still awaiting payment since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) on what date does he envisage that all outstanding (a) UIF and (b) COVID-19 TERS claims and payments will be fully processed to finalisation and be fully paid out? NW3111E
Reply:
1 Total Number of unprocessed Payments
(a) (i)Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) = 89366
(b) (i)COVID-19 Ters = 215557 (Includes corrections and unqualified)
(ii) Employees still awaiting payment since start of Covid-19 Pandemic-
From first month of Pandemic – Mar/Apr 2020 – 3259 employees were never paid due to incorrect applications.
(2) (a) It should be noted that UIF processed all the applications for all the lockdown periods and the outstanding applications are those that were rejected as the applications failed validations and awaiting corrections from employers. UIF payments have turn around to be finalised within 3 days and this turn-around is always achieved for over 95% of the payments. However, payments with outstanding information leverage delays and a guaranteed date to finalise such payments are difficult to commit.
(b) COVID-19 TERS – Applications that were corrected by employers are currently being processed and paid. This continuous processing is done by UIF to ensure that all the employers and employees receive their due benefits upon corrections from employers. The time-frame of when all these applications will be paid is heavily dependent on employers providing accurate and corrected employees information.