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25 000 ex-mineworkers come forward to claim unpaid benefits

Teba CEO Graham Herbert tells Mining Weekly Online's Martin Creamer that 25 000 former mineworkers have come forward so far to claim R5-billion in unpaid employee-benefit claims. Photographs: Duane Daws. Video and Video Editing: Shane Williams.

30th May 2014

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

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JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – More than 25 000 former mineworkers have come forward so far to claim unpaid provident fund and service-award claims following the setting up of a call centre in Johannesburg to encourage them to come forward to collect an estimated R5-billion in outstanding applications.

The radio campaign to attract the attention of the former workers, which initially targeted the Eastern Cape, has now been extended to community radio stations in all labour-sending areas.

Call-in and walk-in requests are now coming in from South Africa’s Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and North West provinces and also the neighbouring states of Mozambique, Swaziland and Botswana.

Ten thousand people responded to the campaign in the first month and 15 500 in the second to lay their claims to the R5-billion, which relates mainly to outstanding mining industry pension and provident funds and long-service awards under the Mines 1970s Pension and Provident Fund.

However, fewer than 100 payouts have been made so far, owing to the time it takes for applications to be approved and money paid to claimants.

Teba Limited CEO Graham Herbert is convinced that significant settlements will eventuate before the end of this year.

“It’s administratively burdensome and the money takes time to get to the beneficiaries,” Herbert explains Mining Weekly Online in the attached video interview.

It is, however, a risk that Teba is prepared to take in the medium term in the belief that the campaign needs to be conducted on a demand-led basis.

Some 200 000 ex-mineworkers have unpaid claims, which the 112-year-old Teba – headed by executive chairperson Dr James Motlatsi, a former 40c-a-shift mineworker and founding president of the National Union of Mineworkers – is able to validate and verify using its a database of more than 1.5-million records, which also show where the ex-mineworkers live.

On occupational disease benefits, Teba continues to be upbeat about its joint intervention with the Medical Bureau for Occupational Diseases to trace a separate group of 200 000 mineworkers with assessed lung damage, so that they can be paid the money owed to them.

"We have now completed about 35 000 of the 200 00 records of assessed mineworkers with silicosis and we’re very satisfied with that progress,” Herbert adds.

Once completed, the medical bureau will be in a position to analyse the number of former mineworkers that still need to be paid and how to find them.

Maximum compensation payments for silicosis are said to range up to R150 000 a claim.

The 200 000 ex-mineworkers being sought are a sample of a bigger pool of assessed claims that have not been paid and represent about a quarter of the total.

“So there are probably about a million people who have been assessed whose awards need to be analysed,” Herbert adds.

At a conference in February hosted by the Southern Africa Trust, the Ford Foundation and the Southern Africa Miners Association, Southern Africa Trust consultant Dr Mathais Nyenti called for the formulation of a strategy to improve the portability of social security benefits of migrant mineworkers as part of a poverty eradication drive.

Nyenti said the R5-billion in benefits owed to former migrant workers included an estimated R3-billion owed by the Mineworkers Provident Fund, while the Mines 1970s Pension and Provident Fund owed R200-million, the Sentinel Mining Industry Retirement Fund owed about R101-million and the Living Hands Umbrella Trust had lost R1.2-billion in the Fidentia scandal.

Further, the Department of Labour’s Compensation Commissioner for Occupational Diseases currently had a backlog of 18 000 claims, with up to 274 400 former mineworkers still to receive their benefits, while its Compensation Fund still had about 12 000 unpaid claimants.

“It’s clear that a large number of people still need to receive their benefits and, therefore, it is imperative that something be done to assist these people,” he stated at the time.

With consultant Professor George Mpedi, Nyenti conducted a scoping study in 2013 on behalf of the Southern Africa Trust, on the challenges experienced by former mineworkers in selected Southern African countries relating to the portability of social security benefits.

Through the study they identified the main challenges faced by migrant workers in accessing the benefits owed to them.

“Former mineworkers are faced by daunting social, structural, policy or regulatory, administrative and institutional obstacles,” Mpedi told the conference.

He cited migrants’ or dependants’ lack of information on access rights, procedures and administrative formalities, the impact of South African immigration law, the absence of portability or limited portability arrangements in South African social security laws and a lack of institutional capacity.

He alleged that there was also a lack of administrative cooperation between various schemes, delays in payment of benefits and professional occupational health services were often inaccessible to the former workers.

Further, delivery was being hampered by differences in national banking systems, a weak Southern Africa Development Community regional framework for occupational injury and disease protection, and the limited application of international standards in relevant countries.

He claimed that the scoping study also found that the South African government and social security institutions were reluctant to disburse benefits properly to former migrant workers.

However, changes to the Pensions Fund Act now allow for a proportion of the interest that has been accruing on the claims to go towards tracing costs.

If the current unsuccessful disbursement methods are continued, however, the already large financial backlog is set to grow even larger.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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