DA requests tabling of Miners’ Compensation Fund in Parliament
18 August 2016
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi blocking the tabling of the financials of the Compensation Fund For Mines and Works in Parliament is cause for deep concern.
Minister Motsoaledi has stated that the reason for his intervention is due to a backlog of 100 000 cases of unpaid claims to injured workers and an effort to fix the current state of the fund.
The Compensation Fund for Mines and Works is a critical fund, which provides compensation for occupational lung diseases in mines and quarries to miners and ex-miners, as well as their families.
For this fund to have a backlog of 100 000 cases points to an appalling state of affairs. The human beings affected – miners – are generally paid little and exposed to dangerous occupational conditions in order to provide for their families. It is completely unacceptable that this already vulnerable group must face delays in compensation because of weaknesses in the system. Miners in South Africa already operate in poor circumstances, leading to strikes and in some cases violence.
Regardless of these unacceptable backlogs, it is of utmost importance for the entity’s state of affairs to be made public, in order for Parliament to provide the necessary oversight.
We are not convinced of Minister Motsoaledi’s rationale for requesting the delay and furthermore question the authority of Parliament in granting such a delay.
It is well-known that the Minister is in urgent need of funds for the National Health Insurance (NHI). The timing of the delay of financials is therefore of great concern to the DA. This further reiterates our call that Parliament should deny the request for delay.
I will today write a letter requesting a legal opinion from the Speaker of the National Assembly as to whether Parliament has the authority to grant this request.
There is strong reason to believe that one of the major contributions to this situation is the dysfunctionality of the Medical Bureau for Occupational Diseases (MBOD). This is the bureau responsible for receiving the claims from affected workers, processing them and then making a determination, via a committee, on what benefits the applicant may be entitled to have.
Once this is established, the case is processed by the Compensation Commission, led by the Compensation Commissioner. The MBOD, which falls under the directorate of non-communicable diseases within the Health Department, has been mismanaged for years, and is only recently coming back on track.
By all accounts, this body is an administrative mess – and this has been acknowledged by the Minister – with huge clogs in the system and now unable to provide financials.
Following a DA request in the Health portfolio committee, that the Compensation Commissioner should present regularly to the committee on the commission’s progress, the Health Budget vote report, tabled in May, stated, as one of its action points that this should happen. However, to date, this has not been done.
It is of utmost importance that the Compensation Commissioner, Dr Barry Kistnasamy, is called to the committee to present a report and to answer questions on the situation at the commission.
I will write to the committee chair to request that this is set up as a matter of urgency and to request that the commissioner reports to the committee before the end of this quarter.
Issued by Wilmot James, DA Shadow Minister of Health, 18 August 2016
