The Freedom Front Plus has expressed its skepticism after Employment and Labour Minister Nomakhosana Meth revealed that there were no backlogs in the payment of claims for maternity benefits for the past years.

The party’s MP Heloise Denner said Meth’s reply that all maternity leave claims were fully up to date, except for the current year, cannot be taken seriously.

“The minister’s assertion that there is not a single outstanding claim, apart from the current financial year, is simply not true. Given the ANC’s track record of poor service delivery, it is hard to believe that one department functions so flawlessly,” she said.

This comes after she received replies from Meth when she asked about the total number of claims for maternity benefits from the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) that were submitted in the 2023 and 2024 financial years, as well as from 1 January 2025 up to date.

Denner enquired about the total number of claims that were paid out in each of the financial years and the claims that were still outstanding from each year and the reasons for the delay in finalising the claims.

In her reply, Meth said a total of 99,945 maternity benefit claims were received in 2023/24 and 187,909 were paid to the tune of R1.7 billion.

She also said 119,893 claims were received in 2024/25 and 220,810 claims were paid to the value of R1.7 billion.

“Claimants can receive multiple payments for a single claim, which is why the number of payments processed may be higher than the number of claims received,” she said.

Meth stated there were no backlogs for both years.

The minister said 30,708 claims were received in the 2025/26 financial year, 62,218 payments were made to the value of R505 million, and that the backlogs stood at 2,626.

She said the current backlog in processing the claims was primarily due to the submission of incomplete applications, particularly with issues relating to the declaration form.

“A recurring problem is that employers continue to declare employees as ‘active’ even after they go on maternity leave, rather than indicating a termination reason and date on the declaration form. As a result, the employee’s status reflects ongoing employment, which leads to discrepancies during claim assessment and delays processing.”

Meth also said many claimants submit applications that were incomplete or lacked the required supporting documents.

“This further complicates the assessment process and contributes significantly to the accumulation of unprocessed/backlog claims.”

The minister added the provinces were addressing the issues by reporting such cases to employer services to make follow-up with employers and contacting claimants to provide outstanding supporting documents.

Denner said her party regularly received complaints from women across the country who have waited years for their maternity leave claims to pay out.

“Even among the party’s own staff there are individuals fighting ongoing battles over unpaid claims, which have been delayed for over a year.”

She said her party agreed that claimants should ensure they meet these requirements, but the reality paints a different picture as claimants often received no feedback and struggle to reach officials, among other things.

“Submitted documents are lost, not processed and must be resubmitted repeatedly,” she said.

Denner noted with concern that there was unfortunately no record of the extent of the problem.

“The department pretends its’ work is up to date, but the party has reason to believe the backlogs are substantial,” she added.

Meanwhile, Meth has disclosed that there were 76,501 outstanding claims on the system of the Compensation Fund as at 31 March 2025, which represented 14% of 531,985 claims received from October 2019 to March 2025.

Claims older than three years were 32,470 while those older than five years were 18,301 and none were older than 10 years.

Meth blamed incomplete claims for preventing the Compensation Fund from making final claim decisions.

mayibongwe.maqhina@inl.co.za

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