The chair of the Justice for Miners Organisation, Bishop Jo Seoka, says payment of damages to 500,000 miners who became sick with tuberculosis (TB) and/or silicosis because of their jobs, must be expedited.
Last Monday, the Tshiamiso Trust paid a “first major batch” of payments to 102 claimants. This followed payment to seven others during a pilot in December 2020. The 109 paid claims, totalling more than R9m, represent a fraction of the about 41,000 claims filed to date.
“As much as we see this as a step in the right direction, it is but a drop in the ocean,” Seoka said: “We say this knowing that half a loaf is better than nothing.”
Referring to a high-court decision in 2019 regarding compensation from six mining companies to mineworkers who contracted chronic respiratory illnesses due to their work, he said an estimated 500,000 affected miners must receive their portion of the R5bn trust within 12 years.
“To report a settlement of R9,074,523 in the two years since the Trust deed became effective on July 26, 2019 is hammering a nail [in] the coffin of the majority of still uncompensated claimants and their families,” Seoka said.
Justice for Miners, which works with affected miners and the families of deceased affected mineworkers, is pressing the trust to make a slew of changes.
According to the organisation, there are “serious problems” at sites where applicants can lodge claims, in terms of how they treat claimants, handle cases, run medical examinations and source work records.
Tshiamiso Trust spokesperson Monako Dibetle, confirmed a “small number of claimants” raised complaints about treatment at the offices. He said this was “perhaps not surprising” as there were about 64 offices across five Southern African countries.
“In each and every case, we have reported it to the senior management of the service provider, and they have taken action,” said Dibetle.
Seoka said medical processes, including X-rays and autopsies, must improve. He said certain documents were available only in English and called for improved communication with claimants.
Dibetle said, “The vast majority of our documentation is available in several languages (Xhosa, Sotho, Setswana, Zulu, Seswati, Afrikaans, English and Portuguese). That applies in particular to documents requiring consent signatures.”
Justice for Miners wants the trust to freeze rejected claims pending more reliable employment data from mining companies. Seoka said the trust must compel mining giants to provide comprehensive medical and work records of claimants who were employed between 1965 and 2019.
“No claim will be rejected due to an absence of employment records,” assured Dibetle. “Where they are missing, various sources are approached, including the miner’s company.” Measures were in place to expedite this process, he added.
Miners for Justice also wants the trust to increase the time for lodging an appeal against a rejected claim to 180 days from day. Dibetle said this was only possible if the high court approved a change to the trust deed, which sets out in detail who qualifies for a claim and how to calculate their benefit.
Dibetle said the trust obtained employment databases from all six mining companies: African Rainbow Minerals, Anglo American SA, AngloGold Ashanti, Gold Fields, Harmony and Sibanye-Stillwater.
Older claims pose a challenge, however, as some records were incomplete and lacked details on “risk work”, which qualifies for a claim, Dibetle said, “In such cases, the trust approaches the company, which then does a search through all its archives,” he said.
Seoka was adamant that the trust “should err on the side of paying claimants rather than not paying”, to which Dibetle replied it was “committed to ensuring that each and every claimant with a valid claim is paid”.
Still, the miners’ organisation said more could be done to ensure speedy payments.
Dibetle emphasised the trust’s work with organisations in regions where former and current miners and their families live. “The Trust believes that [...] we have effectively reached the maximum possible miners in the shortest space of time,” he said. More than 40,000 claims have been lodged to date.
CORRECTION: August 10 2021
An earlier version of this story reported Tshiamiso Trust spokesperson Monako Dibetle as saying that claims documents needing consent signatures were available in English only. That was incorrect and the story has been changed to reflect that they are available in several languages. Business Day regrets the error.
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