Almost another week on and Personal Assistants and Carers on the Isle of Wight have been left without pay following a failure in the Direct Payments system used by Isle of Wight council.
The issue arose when Prepaid Financial Services Ltd (powered by EML) decided to “migrate programs [sic] at pace to their inhouse processor Trace”.
They claim to have begun this process on Monday 14th July with the system failing at 8pm the same day, but Isle of Wight service user, Emily Brothers, told OnTheWight that she “categorically was not able to have payments made over their phone line from the Friday before (11th)”.
No pay for already low paid workers
This unscheduled action, executed with no advance notice, resulted in Carers and Personal Assistants across the country, including the Isle of Wight, not receiving payments for their already low-paid work.
On Thursday last week (17th July), the council told OnTheWight,
“We understand that those who manage their own cards should now be able to access the portal as usual, though it may take several attempts to log in.”
Issue still ongoing
Personal Assistants and Carers have confirmed to OnTheWight that the issue of non-payment is still ongoing.
On Monday 21st July, the council wrote to Direct Payment Recipients, saying,
“We are emailing you to advise of an ongoing technical issue currently affecting access to the pre-paid card portal (EML). This issue is also impacting our internal systems and our access to the pre-paid card portal.
“We are aware of the disruption this may be causing to you, and we apologise for the inconvenience.”
No timeframe provided
The council added,
“EML are working closely with our in-house software team to resolve the ongoing issues. This is being done as swiftly as possible however, a timeframe has not been provided by EML.”
The council confirmed that all affected workers will receive full back-pay once the EML system is fully operational, and advised anyone still having access issues to contact EML’s customer service team on 02036 334511.
OnTheWight will continue to monitor developments and provide updates as more information becomes available.
