Frustration over the non-payment of claims by the crisis-hit Compensation Fund has prompted all affected stakeholders, including medical practitioners, to launch the Injured Workers Action Group (IWAG).
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 entities that facilitate payments by the fund to practitioners and worker bodies.
The fund provides compensation to employees who are injured or contract diseases through the course of their employment.
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 on Wednesday. The fund has been badly managed for many years and has received seven qualified audit reports from auditor-general Kimi Makwetu.
It is financed by about R9bn paid in levies annually by employers, according to its 2019 annual report.
IWAG spokesperson Tim Hughes said at the launch of the organisation that the fund, which has reserves of R60bn, was suffering from a software system failure which meant that claims were not being processed.
The fund switched off its old system in August and replaced it with a new SAP-based system in October but the new system, with a R300m price tag, is dysfunctional. There have been difficulties with logging on to the system and getting access to it, Hughes said.
According to an industry survey since the system was launched in October only about 2,8% of injured workers had been able to submit claims and less than 1% have been paid.
Hughes estimated the value of unpaid claims by the fund to be at about R2bn.
He said the system was so dysfunctional that tweaks would not fix it and that it could be perhaps another 12 months before the system was fit for purpose.
“The current backlog and this is only the backlog since August has to be somewhere in the order of 150,000 injured workers whose claims cannot be processed. The figure is probably now closer to 180,000 injured workers.
“The fund's dysfunctionality also means that medical practitioners — those who supply services the workers — are not being paid. We do have a situation where some medical practices are facing financial ruin.”
Mafata was not available for comment.
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