JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Former mineworkers and their beneficiaries are continuing to come forward in their droves to claim unpaid pension, provident fund and service-award benefits.

“To date, we’ve had 130 000 mineworkers or their beneficiaries either walk into our offices or phone in to claim,” says Teba CEO Dr Graham Herbert, who adds that there has been no refutation of an estimated total number of 200 000 people being owed an estimated R5-billion. (Also watch attached Mining Weekly Online video)

The huge payout backlog has, however, hardly been dented, despite the 113-year-old, 600-employee Teba being able to identify the correct people from the more than 1.5-million records at its disposal.

“We’re not giving up,” says Herbert, who heads the organisation that has traditionally been a huge recruiter of mineworkers to the gold and platinum mines and which now also provides employment readiness, community development and social upliftment services to an industry that is unlikely to be doing much recruiting for the next 12 to 18 months.

Herbert attributes the tardiness of the payout to the complexity of the application process as well as a perception that Teba should be providing its services for free, which it does to all former mineworkers and their families, but not to the mines, which are now, as a result of changes to the Pension Funds Act, allowed to use a portion of the interest that has been accruing on the claims to help offset tracing costs.

Parties involved in the process of ensuring that the benefits are paid out include fund administrators, banks, regulators and former employers.

Teba reports greater roleplayer alignment as well as greater acknowledgement that the problem is resolvable, especially now that the statutory Financial Services Board is taking steps to play an intrusive role.

When the Southern Africa Trust, the Ford Foundation and the Southern Africa Miners Association hosted a conference in February last year, strong calls were made for urgent payout action in the interests of regional poverty eradication.

The conference was told that unpaid amounts included R3-billion owed by the Mineworkers Provident Fund, R200-million by the Mines 1970s Fund, R101-million by the Sentinel Mining Industry Retirement Fund and R1.2-billion by the Fidentia-linked Living Hands Umbrella Trust.

Former mineworkers were said at the conference to be inadequately assisted by social security laws and hampered by insufficient information on access procedures and administrative formalities.

Also, current disbursement methods were described as being in need of reform, to prevent the already large financial backlog from growing ever larger.