Job losses over Compensation Fund payments crisis
Publish date: 26 February 2020
Issue Number: 324
Diary: Legalbrief Workplace
Category: Labour
Frustration over the non-payment of claims by the Compensation Fund is growing, but a potentially more devastating consequence is the loss of jobs, writes Legalbrief. Some healthcare providers who work with the Compensation Fund have started to retrench staff while others have halted operations following six months of not being able to log claims with the Fund. According to a Fin24 report, several individuals and associations representing allied healthcare workers, who provide support services like physiotherapy and occupational therapy, said practices were closing down because the Employment and Labour Department has not settled any Compensation Fund claims since October 2019. ‘Practices have steadily been shutting their doors since October 2019, but the situation has become dire as of January 2020 when service providers who manage injury on duty claims on behalf of private practices started informing their clients that they were unable to settle claims,’ they said. Moira Wilson, who has a physiotherapy practice at Netcare’s Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, said physiotherapists, private hospitals, pharmacies and x-ray establishments who initially carried on seeing Compensation Fund patients without getting payment were unable to carry the cost anymore and had started turning them away. The Compensation Fund had not responded by the time of deadline.
This frustration has prompted all affected stakeholders, including medical practitioners, to launch the Injured Workers Action Group (IWAG), reports Business Day. The lobby group is appealing to the government and the fund to come up with a swift solution to the crisis. Members of IWAG include the SA Medical and Dental Practitioners Association, SA Private Ambulance and Emergency Services Association, Occupational Therapy Association, SA Society of Physiotherapy and entities that facilitate payments by the fund to practitioners and worker bodies. Compensation Fund commissioner Vuyo Mafata is expected to update MPs on the performance of the fund in a briefing to Parliament's Employment & Labour Committee today. IWAG spokesperson Tim Hughes estimated the value of unpaid claims by the fund to be at about R2bn.
Trade union Solidarity has requested an urgent meeting with Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi and the department’s Director-General, Thobile Lamati, to address the lack of service delivery. Advocate Hanlie van Vuuren, head of occupational health and safety at Solidarity, said: ‘The Fund’s operations have ground to a complete halt over the past few months. This state of affairs has been brought on by the introduction of a new computer system implemented in September 2019.’ She indicated that neither employees nor stakeholders were receiving any service owed to them by the Fund. ‘What is even more disconcerting is that now, roughly six months later, the system is still not operational and enquiries to the Fund remain unsuccessful. Not even Compensation Fund staff members have access to the system. Due to this dire situation new claims cannot be registered, employees are not paid for periods of absence from work, and doctors cannot treat new patients because no new claim numbers are available. Payments cannot be processed either.’
Meanwhile, to further improve the administration of the state-owned and administered compensation system of occupational lung diseases, the Minerals Council SA has entered into a three-year partnership, dubbed the co-governance model, with the Medical Bureau for Occupation Disease (MBOD) and the Compensation Commissioner for Occupational Diseases (CCOD). Mining Weekly reports that this model will be used to implement projects and initiatives that will help the MBOD and the CCOD become an efficient and streamlined compensation fund and administrator. The council identified three of these as being the most crucial. This includes the digitisation of chest X-rays, creating a network of benefit medical examination service providers, and improving accounting practices.
