Commission sends out duplicate unemployment checks, again

COLUMBIA — For the second time in the last few months, the S.C. Employment Security Commission has sent out duplicate checks.

This time, about 150 people have received two checks for their unemployment benefits. Back in July, the agency sent out about 1,250 duplicate checks.

Stan Yarbrough, director of information technology for the agency, said this mistake was caused by a programming error. He said the last time South Carolina was on extended benefits was 1983 and the state’s computer software to handle extended benefits was written in 1986, so it had never been used.

The duplicate checks in July were caused by human error, when an employee working at 3 a.m.  to keep up with the high volume of checks printed some checks twice.

“While we certainly strive to be 100 percent, we have done, since January the first of this year, we’ve processed five-and-a-half million checks and direct deposits,” Yarbrough said. “We’re not proud of the fact that we made these particular errors.

“We are proud of the fact that we’ve done so many without a problem and we are taking steps to ensure that this doesn’t happen again and that we take the time to make sure, in our testing procedures, that we get better at it and we avoid this ever happening again.”

Agency spokesman Clark Newsom said the high volume of work is to blame for the mistakes.

“I don’t know that we’re having any more problems than other agencies are having, having to deal with these types of things, and the times that we’re in right now,” he said. “You’ve got to understand, these are unprecedented times. We’re paying out almost 120,000 checks per week.”

Anyone who receives two checks this week should take one of them back to their local S.C. Employment Security Commission Workforce Center. Anyone who cashes both checks will not be issued a check next week.