The Department of Basic Education (DBE) concluded the third phase of the Basic Education Employment Initiative (BEEI) in August. This meant that around 200,000 young people had their employment contracts terminated and had to look for new employment opportunities.
The BEEI fell under the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative (PYEI), a programme to reduce youth unemployment in South Africa.
While the BEEI is currently in its fourth phase, youth employed in the first three phases were not eligible to participate in the latest iteration of the employment initiative.
Previous participants in the BEEI were encouraged to apply for unemployment benefits from the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF). The UIF provides temporary financial support to workers who previously contributed to the fund. All workers in South Africa are required to contribute to the UIF.
Teaching assistants were eligible to receive UIF benefits because they contributed to fund. Their UIF contributions were deducted from their monthly remuneration before being paid into their bank accounts.
The UIF has paid out R7,7 million to 1746 former Educator Assistants and General Assistants who reside within the area of the Amajuba District Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal Province. These payments were made between 21 and 25 November.
Gugu Khomo, the UIF Deputy Director in KwaZulu-Natal says they opted to use a consolidated approach to deal with the potentially large volume of claims they anticipated from teaching assistants.
Khoma explained that the UIF first had to confirm that all teaching assistants were compliant with the UIF’s requirements. Once this was completed, the fund visited venues availed by the DBE to process and pay claims to assistants.
“The process was easy and without hiccups because we had already confirmed the employment history, contributions and declarations” said the deputy director.
They added that the process was done without any paperwork. This was possible due to assistants using their smartphones to access the UIF’s uFiling system.
All the claims were made without any paperwork from clients because they used their smartphones to access the uFiling system and apply for benefits.
The UIF will be rolling out the project to other parts of the KZN province soon and will announce dates and additional details in due course.
