Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi announced on March 31 that applications for the National Disaster Covid-19 benefit, which had been put in place to mitigate the effects of lay-offs during the lockdown, would not be handled on an individual basis and would instead need to be submitted by sectoral associations and bargaining councils. Nxesi said the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), which was administering the benefits, was not in a position to deal with millions of individual claims.