UIF benefits your staff can claim
The five UIF benefits a South African employee can claim, the six-month windows, and the UI-19 information the employer must supply behind each claim.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Running a business businesses in South Africa
An employee tells you she is pregnant and asks what she will live on while she is off. Another is retrenched and wants to know how to claim from the UIF. A third has been ill for weeks and has run out of paid sick leave. In each case the claim is the employee's to make, but it cannot go anywhere without paperwork from you.
That is the part employers underestimate. The Unemployment Insurance Fund pays the benefit, yet it relies on the employer's declarations to know who the person is, what they earned and when they stopped working. This article explains which benefits exist, how long staff have to claim, and what the employer has to supply, month by month and at the point someone leaves.
The five benefits
The Department of Employment and Labour's basic guide to the UIF says the Fund provides five types of benefit:
- unemployment benefits;
- illness benefits;
- maternity benefits;
- adoption benefits;
- dependants' benefits.
The guide is undated, and the department's own pages give the detail of who qualifies for each and how much is paid. What matters for an employer is that every one of these claims rests on the same thing: an accurate record, from you, of the employee's employment and pay.
The six-month claim windows
The guide sets time limits. It says unemployment and illness claims can be submitted within 6 months of the end of service, and maternity benefit applications within 6 months after the birth.
Six months sounds generous, but it starts running at the worst possible moment for the employee: just after losing their job, during an illness, or with a newborn at home. Delays on the employer's side eat into it. If the employee has to chase you for documents for two months, they have lost a third of their window.
So treat a departing or claiming employee's paperwork as urgent, and tell staff about the windows when the relevant event happens, not when they ask.
The employer's UI-19 behind every claim
The guide makes the employer's role explicit: the employer's UI-19 declaration is required to support each claim.
The UI-19 is not a one-off form for leavers. The form itself says an employer must, by the seventh day of each month, give the Unemployment Insurance Commissioner the previous month's employer and employee remuneration details, including new appointments and terminations. Each month's declaration builds the record that a later claim draws on.
That has a practical consequence. An employer that has kept its monthly declarations up to date can support a claim quickly. One that has not may find that the employee's claim is held up while the history is reconstructed, at the employee's expense.
The department's basic guide to the Unemployment Insurance Fund explains the benefits, the contributions and the claim process, including what the employer must provide.
What the UI-19 records about each employee
According to the UI-19 form, gazetted on 4 November 2019, the declaration asks for each employee's:
- gross monthly remuneration;
- hours worked in the month;
- start date;
- termination date and the reason for it;
- whether they are a contributor.
Weekly wages are converted to a monthly figure by multiplying by 52/12, so an employer paying weekly has to make that conversion rather than adding up the weeks in a given month.
Two fields deserve extra care. The termination reason should say what actually happened, not a softened version agreed in an exit conversation, because a claim will be read against it. And the hours worked bear on whether the person was a contributor at all. Get both right at the time, rather than correcting them after a claim has stalled.
Preparing the UI-19 from payroll in Achekam
In Achekam, the monthly UIF declaration, the UI-19 for an employee who leaves and the COIDA Return of Earnings are prepared from payroll, and filed by a person who records the reference. Preparing them from payroll means the remuneration and dates on the form come from the same records as the payslips, not from a separate spreadsheet.
There is one limit to know. The Department of Labour's E03 electronic file is not produced, so the information reaches the department through whatever channel your business files on, entered or uploaded by a person.
Recording the reference after filing is worth the extra step. When a former employee phones months later to say the UIF has no record of them, the reference shows what was filed and when. For the departure itself, including final pay, see final pay when an employee leaves.
Maternity and illness while still employed
Not every claim follows a departure. A maternity or illness claim can arise while the person is still on your books, for example when paid leave has run out or the leave is unpaid.
Achekam's payroll keeps annual, sick, family responsibility and unpaid leave with monthly accrual, and a line manager approves their own team's leave, but nobody approves their own. Unpaid leave does not cut pay automatically: payroll is warned and decides. That decision point is where someone should also ask whether the employee will be claiming from the UIF, and make sure that month's declaration reflects what was actually paid. How a law firm handles maternity leave in payroll is set out in maternity leave in payroll.
When an employee asks about a claim
Give them the claim windows, give them your UIF reference, and check that their last few monthly declarations were filed and show the right dates and pay. If they have left, make sure the termination date and reason on the UI-19 are correct before it goes. Those few minutes decide whether their claim moves or stalls.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
