TALLAHASSEE, FLA. (WSVN) - Florida’s unemployment website will be down for maintenance through the weekend.
Residents will be unable to check the status of their claim as the CONNECT system was partially shut down.
“We decided to take the system down today, Friday, to fulfill the mission we have set for ourselves, which is to pay Floridians as quickly as possible,” Florida Department of Management Services Secretary Jonathan Satter said.
Officials said the system is overloaded. Before the crisis, they might have seen 25,000 unemployment applications in a month.
“In the month of December 2019, the agency processed about 25,000 claims,” Satter said. “We’re seeing days where we have twice that many, if not, three times as many.”
According to a message on the website, the system will be back up and running at 8 a.m. Monday.
Residents can still submit claims through the website.
According to a statement from the Department of Economic Opportunity, the website is offline so it can be made more efficient.
“In order to process the payments faster, the CONNECT system will be offline until Monday,” officials said. “We know that not being able to access the system may cause uncertainty, but these updates are designed to expedite the process for payment.”
Meanwhile, the money can’t come fast enough for people like Yolanda Vila, who has not had a paycheck since mid-March.
“I’m pretty scared because I’ve always worked all my life, and I’ve never been in this situation,” Vila said. “I’m the main provider of my household. I have three children. We have nothing, absolutely nothing, and there’s no hope because you can’t speak to anyone, and you can’t get through the computer, nobody to talk to.”
Vila added that she is so stressed out that she cannot sleep, and she is one of nearly two million people who need assistance.
“The last few weeks have been horrible,” Tangella Smith said. “Rent still has to be paid. FP&L has to be paid.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has received criticism of how he has handled the unemployment situation so far.
“Before you put a task force together on reopening the economy that could put lives at risk, let’s put a task force together to make sure that we fix the broken unemployment system,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Fla., said.
The governor acknowledged some of the issues during a news conference.
“This thing was a clunker,” DeSantis said. “There’s no doubt about it. There’s more changes that need to be made to the system. Those changes are being made to the system, and I think it’s going to continue to work better.”
Although it’s taken longer than people hoped to receive assistance, the governor said there are plenty of funds available.
“My view has been, ‘Let’s get this money out as quickly as possible,’ because this is exactly the reason why you have unemployment system. When something like this happens, you really want to get it out,” DeSantis said.
Officials said DeSantis suspended the requirement that recipients submit a report every two weeks on their job search and ability to work in order to keep receiving benefits. The one-week waiting period that required claimants to wait seven days before they could receive reemployment assistance has also been suspended.
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