messages
6 November 2006
The Public Awareness and Education Campaign of the Unemployment Insurance
Fund, launched in October 2005, has proved a major success with an estimated
more than 30 million South Africans throughout the country believed to have
received various UIF messages. The campaign is a nationwide outdoor programme
in collaboration with South African Broadcast Corporation (SABC) designed to
inform, educate and raise awareness around the services of the fund including
providing full office services through mobile trucks during the outdoor
campaign.
UIF's Head of Communications and Marketing, Kgomotso Sebetso said to date
the outdoor campaigns had already been held in eight of the nine provinces and
were accompanied by live broadcasts of telephonic interviews, talk shows and
live studio presentations reaching an estimated audience of more than 30
million listeners.
Sebetso added that the campaign should be understood against the background
of the overall strategic direction of the organisation. "The UIF places
emphasis on educating stakeholders about their rights and obligations in terms
of the Unemployment Insurance Act. Our priority is to ensure that we broaden
coverage of beneficiaries through awareness and information," he said.
"We are now covering more than 7 million workers and our aim is to bring
more workers within our fold by increasing the compliance levels through
enforcement of the legislation. To date we have more than one million
commercial and domestic employers registered with us," Sebetso said. In the
previous financial year the UIF paid out more than R2,9 billion to over 589 000
beneficiaries.
He said the UIF, which was one of the few government entities to have
received an unqualified audit report from the Auditor-General in the 2005/06
Financial Year, would continue to entrench itself within the community as a
safety net against unemployment hardships.
Meanwhile, Sebetso has encouraged communities around the Maluti-a-phofung
Municipality to attend in their thousands the last event of this first round of
the community outreach programme to be held at the Charles Mopeli Stadium in
QwaQwa on Saturday, 11 November 2006.
Enquiries:
Kgomotso Sebetso
Cell: 073 269 9870
Mokgadi Pela
Cell: 082 808 2168
Issued by: Department of Labour
6 November 2006
