Useless department with the worst website ever

I wish I could give it no stars at all.

I have a new domestic worker. I want to register her for workmen’s compensation. You are SUPPOSED to be able to do it online. Getting into the system is impossible. After entering your details you have to “type the image words”. The purpose of this is unclear, perhaps it isn’t be sure you are not an AI entity. So you figure out what they are beneath a pointless squiggle vaguely resembling a curved sword and you type them. No matter how many times you do it you do not succeed and need to enter them again. Each time you fail a new “word” comes up so there are no second attempts. After about 20 attempts you give up in sheer frustration as most normal people have lots of other things they need to fit into their day, and cannot potentially spend hours carrying out this useless step repeatedly.

If you get past this as I did on one occasion you are then asked for your trading name, never mind you are a pensioner simply employing a lady to help you with housework one morning a week. Without a trading name the submit button doesn’t work. And no, your ID number does not suffice.

Needless to say no phone in the entire department ever gets answered.

In desperation you decide to go to an office. Despite no contrary indications on Google, the DoL office at the Royal Hotel in Durban does not do regular DoL work only stuff at Provincial level, and the other one opposite the yacht mole has a queue about 100 people long and as a 66 year old woman in poor health you would be a fool to join it as the chances of having your handbag and/or some of its contents ****** are extremely high, as you are standing out on an open veranda, exposed not only to the people in the queue, some of whom are no doubt desperate for money, but also the general public walking past. You go home having wasted time and the costs of parking in the CBD and have nothing to show for it.

I would like to give this lady a chance to earn some money but with this level of difficulty in registering her for workmen’s compensation I must either break the law or terminate her contract after a single morning of perfectly satisfactory service.