The Compensation Commission for Occupational Diseases is sharing data with retirement fund administrators to track down former miners with unclaimed benefits worth an estimated R4bn.
The collaboration holds hope for some of the 3.5-million beneficiaries owed R42bn in unclaimed benefits held by retirement fund administrators at the end of 2016, according to the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, previously known as the Financial Services Board.
The Compensation Commission for Occupational Diseases had already identified 7,000 former Harmony mine workers who were collectively owed R1.7bn in unclaimed retirement benefits, commissioner Barry Kistnasamy said. Thirteen former miners were unaware that they were each owed more than R1m, he said.
The commission provides compensation to miners who contract lung diseases and is collaborating with several pension and provident funds to identify former mine workers on its files who have unclaimed retirement benefits.
"We have signed agreements with several funds, including the Mineworkers Provident Fund, Sentinel Retirement Fund and the Mines 1970s Provident Fund to cross-link our databases, so when we go into the field we can tell [former miners] if they have other unclaimed benefits," said Kistnasamy.
Lung disease payouts
The commission is running a massive programme in collaboration with the mining industry to trace thousands of former miners and help them claim compensation for lung diseases caused by their work.
It has steadily increased the number of payouts to injured miners over the past three years, as the reforms instituted by Kistnasamy since his appointment in 2012 bear fruit.
The commissioner introduced a series of interventions, including the development of an electronic database to replace the chaotic paper records held by the commission, ensuring miners could obtain their records from the recruitment agency Teba at no cost, and working with the mining industry to launch one-stop service centres to help former mine workers finalise their claims. The commission had doubled the number of payouts in the 2017-18 financial year compared to the year before, Kistnasamy told Parliament on Thursday.
A total of 10,324 miners and former mine workers received a collective R254m in 2017-18, compared to R204m paid to 5,259 claimants the year before. This is a steady improvement on the R79.3m paid out to 1,766 claimants in 2015-16.
"We have had major successes," he told Parliament’s portfolio committee on health.
Claims for loss of earnings for miners with tuberculosis had been fast-tracked and constituted a significant portion of the payouts in 2017-18, he said.
Compensation benefits for new claimants would increase by 33.8% as of April, he said, noting that the last time benefits were increased was in 2009.
Kistnasamy said the commission’s budget allocation from the Treasury was insufficient for the task at hand and posed a risk to its performance.
Its allocation rises to R200.2m in 2018-19 from R194.6m in 2017-18, a nominal increase of 2.9%.
Over the medium-term expenditure framework its allocation from the Treasury is, however, expected to keep pace with inflation and is set to rise by on average 6% a year between 2018-19 and 2020-21.
The budget of the Compensation Commission for Occupational Diseases was supplemented by the revenue it raised from controlled mines and works, but the levies were too low and many mines did not pay their dues, said Kistnasamy.
As a result, the commission was heavily dependent on the support it received from the mining industry, he said.
The Chamber of Mines has seconded medical doctors to the commission and provided staff and technical resources.
A total of 28% of the 252 registered controlled mines and works did not pay levies in 2016-17, according to the commission’s annual performance plan, which has been tabled in Parliament.
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