In 2003, Special Assignment investigated the Department of Labour’s Compensation Fund, uncovering huge backlogs and general inefficiency. Employees who’d been injured on duty complained that they weren’t being paid out by the Fund. Five years on, it seems little has changed.
This Tuesday, Special Assignment focuses on the service providers – doctors, specialists and private ambulance companies – who provide medical care to workers who are injured on duty, but simply don’t get paid out by the Fund.
Suzette Woolff is director of a company called “Injury on Duty”, based in Port Elizabeth. She’s owed hundreds of thousands of rands by the Compensation Fund. “It’s crippling me, it really is. I don’t know for how much longer I can continue.”
Her words are echoed by Dave Gardner, who owns a private ambulance company in the Eastern Cape. “It has affected cash flow to a drastic state over the last two years for all private services. We are sitting owed millions and don’t seem able to solve this problem.”
Now these service providers are reluctant to take on injury on duty cases, to the detriment of injured workers.
 Winston Arnold is one such case. He was paralysed in a car accident in the Karoo while doing deliveries for his company. He has to see a specialist for a check up once a year to ensure the proper functioning of his kidneys and bladder.
But now the ambulance company which has always transported him hasn’t being paid by the Compensation Fund, so won’t take him. And his specialist in Cape Town has had enough too. “My doctor in the Cape says he is fed up with these people. The words he used, sorry for my language, he is gatvol of the Workmen’s Compensation Fund.”
A visit to Compensation House in Pretoria wasn’t encouraging. Before we arrived, employees were informed that Special Assignment would be filming. An internal email stated: “Let us not seem to be hiding anything… the message… is that we are motivated to make it happen.”
But about ten staff members in the medical claim section were playing games on their computers, some were doing hair-dressing and others were wandering about.
Compensation Commissioner Shadrack Mkhonto admits they have huge problems. “The capacity at a strategic level in this organization is very low. We have two managers at a high level here. The rest are junior officials. They are not medically inclined. We need to provide training for them and I must admit we don’t have a training division here.”
Mkhonto, the former deputy Director-General of the Labour Department, who has been Compensation Commissioner since May last year, has given his assurance that he will change things. “I have put my head on a block to say I will make a difference here. I have done it elsewhere before and I think if I am given the necessary support I will do it again.”
This investigation is produced by Jessica Pitchford.
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