Gauteng gobbles nearly half of South Africa’s lockdown relief fund

PRETORIA  – Nearly half of the R16.5 billion that South Africa’s Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) has disbursed under a temporary relief scheme for those who have lost income due to the Covid-19 pandemic has gone to Gauteng province, the department of employment and labour said on Wednesday.

In a statement, the department’s spokesperson Teboho Thejane said this amounted to more than 1.5 million Gauteng workers out of the nearly 3.5 million employees who had benefitted from the fund across South Africa. In monetary terms, employees in Gauteng had received more than R7.9 billion in payouts from claims lodged by 111,385 employers.

The Western Cape received the second largest amount with R2.7 billion disbursed so far to 549,156 workers represented by 54 077 employers.

“The Northern Cape had the least number of claimants with R163 million paid to the province for 32,141 workers represented by 4 176 employers,” Thejane said.

KwaZulu-Natal received over R2.4 billion paid to 523,578 workers, while the Eastern Cape had nearly R913 million distributed to 186,789 workers and in Mpumalanga 185,329 workers received R886 million in cash.