Report shows how South African workers were scammed out of Covid-19 payments by their bosses
Civil society group Corruption Watch has published a new report showing how South African employees lost out on payments through the Temporary Employer/ Employee Relief Scheme (TERS) as a result of corruption and maladministration.
The purpose of TERS was to support employees whose services would not be used during lockdown because of the disaster regulations that designated only certain industry sectors and workers as essential.
Following the lifting of hard lockdown, TERS benefits continued to support those employees who were having to work less than they would like to and whose income was diminished because of pandemic-related adaptations such as staggering of work hours and shorter hours to implement social distancing in the workplace.
While thousands of South African benefitted from the scheme, Corruption Watch found that a number of employees had lost out on payments, either through their employers’ or government’s administrative errors.
The group said that it received over 100 reports of alleged corruption relating to TERS, which helped it to compile the report.
Fraud
Most of the allegations reported to CW referred to employers either registering employees for TERS but not paying the employees when the pay-outs arrived, or companies claiming on behalf of the employees but giving them only a fraction of the money due to them.
Certain unscrupulous companies gave the pay-outs to employees as loans that their staff would have to pay back.
“Corruption Watch investigated reports where there was sufficient evidence of criminal wrongdoing to enable further action. In selected cases there were allegations of employers bribing officials,” the group said.
“In several reports there were allegations of false TERS claims for employees who had long since left the company, claims made for ID numbers of persons not even working for the company, and for employees who were in fact working during lockdown.”
In many other instances, administrative issues led to delays in the time from application to receiving the TERS benefit. This meant that when the employee was in crisis, the benefit was not available to them.
“In the TERS reports we received which contained allegations of corruption, it is evident once more that both the public and private sector is involved in corruption.
“In most cases, the allegation was that the employer (private sector) had been the initiator of the corrupt act, for example, bribing an official (public sector),” Corruption Watch said.
Flawed system
Corruption Watch noted that auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke received reports of a similar nature.
The Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) had managed to recover R3.4-billion of funds disbursed incorrectly, she said while presenting the second special Covid-19 audit report, released on 9 December 2020.
Maluleke said the AGSA noted system weaknesses within government such as incorrect calculations and a lack of validations.
“In its first special report, the audit office reported various incorrect TERS payments made and flagged a high number of payments that required further investigation.
“These payments included payouts to people who are below the legal age of employment, deceased, working in government, receiving social grants, or receiving other Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) benefits,” Maluleke said.
Corruption Watch said that law enforcement must investigate employers who are not paying UIF contributions to the South African Revenue Service.
It also called for authorities to investigate cases of bribery of Department of Labour officials by employers, and continue to recover funds wrongly paid due to misrepresentation.
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