With no apparent end in sight to the problems, Ontario is now giving an additional $5 million to municipalities that continue to rack up bills for overtime and training related to the province’s troubled welfare caseload computer system.

The announcement Thursday brings the total of additional money the province has had to pay out for SAMS-related costs such as training, overtime, and additional hires for Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program, to roughly $21 million.

That doesn’t include the $242 million the province paid in project development costs for the system.

SAMS (Social Assistance Management System), a large computer software program from IBM that rolled out last November, manages case files and payments for more than half a million social assistance recipients in Ontario. Caseworkers across the province use SAMS to manage client files.

But glitches and major operating issues with the system are creating nightmares and longer workdays for those caseworkers.

Thursday’s announcement came after municipal managers across the province stepped up demands for funds to cover the full costs for “service impacts’’ stemming from SAMS.

On Monday, the city of Ottawa’s deputy city manager Steve Kanellakos released a damning report that estimated the city will need $4 million to manage service impacts from SAMS.

That was about $3.5 million short of what the province had promised that city.

“With the failure of SAMS to keep up with regular business, there has been a major strain’’ on social services staff in Ottawa, Kanellakos said in his report.

“SAMS has introduced a layer of time and complexity that is extremely challenging,’’ he added.

The problems have been consistent throughout the province. The worst setback came in late November shortly after the system’s launch, when SAMS assigned overpayments totalling $20 million to 17,000 clients, some of which the province and its municipalities continue to scramble to recover.

The system has also caused some clients to receive little or none of their social assistance.

In February the province announced up to $300,000 for an independent review to look into problems with SAMS.

A special technical working group, consisting of municipal and provincial front-line workers, managers and technical staff, was also put in place to figure out ways to improve the computer system.

The funds announced Thursday are for SAMS problems on the Ontario Works side, and will come out of the ministry of Community and Social Service’s existing social assistance administration budget, Amber Anderson, press secretary for Community and Social Services Minister Helena Jaczek, said in a statement Thursday.

“While SAMS is improving social assistance in Ontario, its implementation has had challenges and must be improved. In the first year of introducing a new technology there will be additional operating costs such as staff overtime as we work with our delivery partners to fully normalize use of the new platform.”

On March 4, OMSSA (Ontario Municipal Social Services Association), which represents municipal workers, commissioners, and managers in the province, sent a letter to assistant deputy minister Richard Steele outlining ongoing problems with SAMS and stating “our members’ requests for 100 per cent compensation (for SAMS-related service impacts) has not changed.’’

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In a statement after the new funding was announced Thursday, OMSSA spokesperson Petra Wolfbeiss called the $5 million “good news’’ but added: “I wish we could say that we see the light at the end of the tunnel, but unfortunately we are still very much in the middle of trying to figure out how SAMS will support staff in working with clients to the best extent possible.’’

New Democrat MPP Cindy Forster, her party’s Community and Social Services critic, took aim at the announcement, saying “municipalities shouldn’t be on the hook for the government’s mishandling of the SAMS system, and neither should Ontarians.

“This government knew full well that the SAMS system wasn’t ready, but they rolled it out anyway,’’ leaving dedicated case workers stuck “cleaning up the mess’’ Forster added.