uFiling down

The Department of Labour’s uFiling platform has been offline for more than a month, and users cannot access the system to declare and pay Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) contributions.

The UIF issued a statement in September 2024 explaining that its platform is down due to a Pretoria High Court interim interdict preventing a service provider from signing a new contract to support and maintain the uFiling platform.

“The court issued an interim interdict preventing, with immediate effect, the new service provider from rendering services for the UIF online portal,” labour minister Nomakhosazana Meth said in a statement.

“As a result, the UIF online platforms that are currently disrupted include uFiling, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Virtual Office, as well as the UIF Covid19 TERS systems.”

UIF communications director Trevor Hattingh said the previous service provider was problematic and that its contract with the party ended on 18 August 2024.

The UIF sought the services of a new contractor rather than renewing the contract.

“The former service provider is alleging in their court papers, among other things, that without their services, we would not be able to pay South Africans,” GroundUp quoted Hattingh as saying.

MyBroadband asked the Department of Labour for further details, but it hadn’t answered our questions by publication.

Several sources have told MyBroadband that the website has been inaccessible since at least Friday, 23 August 2024. The website now shows that it is offline due to planned maintenance.

“uFiling has been down for months — quite bizarre — everything back to being manual, and payments have to also be manual,” one source said.

“Everything needs to be done by email — a monthly U19, and at the moment, they are auditing small businesses who don’t have the time to ‘go into the nearest labour office to access services.'”

They added that the notice indicating that the service is down for planned maintenance only recently went up.

“In my view, this is an inadequate explanation for a major disruption of a government online service that serves thousands of stakeholders, depending on UIF funding,” they said.

Another source said the outage impacted all UIF services, including the app.

“The website has been erratic, and then without prior notice, the server could not be reached without any explanation except for an error code,” they said.

Another user voiced frustration at the lack of notices on the website and at the unanswered emails.

“Their call support says their system is offline, and they have no idea when/if it will be online again,” they said.

In a statement, the UIF announced that it had extended operating hours and measures for employers to submit and pay contributions at UIF centres.

“A decision to extend operating hours at UIF service points and to ramp up capacity was taken in anticipation of increased demand for real-time service,” it said.

The statement also finally disclosed the legal action between the UIF and its service provider.

“Due to the uFiling platform not having any support or maintenance at this time, its services were suspended,” the UIF said.

It added that, since the suspension, the UIF has processed more than 181,000 claims, amounting to nearly R420 million in payouts.