{"id":562731,"date":"2024-09-30T09:05:06","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T07:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=562731"},"modified":"2024-09-30T09:05:12","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T07:05:12","slug":"ufiling-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/government\/562731-ufiling-down.html","title":{"rendered":"uFiling down"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“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<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The UIF sought the services of a new contractor rather than renewing the contract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“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<\/a> Hattingh as saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MyBroadband asked the Department of Labour for further details, but it hadn’t answered our questions by publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“uFiling has been down for months \u2014 quite bizarre \u2014 everything back to being manual, and payments have to also be manual,” one source said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Everything needs to be done by email \u2014 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.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They added that the notice indicating that the service is down for planned maintenance only recently went up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another source said the outage impacted all UIF services, including the app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another user voiced frustration at the lack of notices on the website and at the unanswered emails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

“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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The statement also finally disclosed the legal action between the UIF and its service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

It added that, since the suspension, the UIF has processed more than 181,000 claims, amounting to nearly R420 million in payouts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Department of Labour has extended operating hours at some UIF branches to help process payments and contributions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341076,"featured_media":508250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18668],"tags":[20263,97203,83547],"class_list":["post-562731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-department-of-labour","tag-ufiling","tag-unemployment-insurance-fund"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562731"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562731"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":562744,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562731\/revisions\/562744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}