The Compensation Fund computer system is not broken and is working properly though new registration procedures are more demanding, says the Fund's CEO, in response to an outcry over the non-payment of claims.
Business Day says Compensation Fund commissioner Vuyo Mafata was responding to the outcry over the non-payment of claims, which prompted affected stakeholders, including medical practitioners, to last week launch the Injured Workers Action Group (IWAG). Among the group’s members are the SA Medical and Dental Practitioners Association, SA Private Ambulance and Emergency Services Association, Occupational Therapy Association and the SA Society of Physiotherapy as well as entities that facilitate payments by the fund to practitioners and worker bodies.
Service providers say that they have not been paid for six months and that their businesses are threatened with closure. The report notes the fund switched off its old computer system in August and replaced it with a new SAP-based system in October. Stakeholders say the new system is dysfunctional as they have difficulty logging in and getting access to it.
Mafata said on Friday that the new system had controls that were lacking in the old system in that it required that claims be submitted by an authorised person. Third parties or agents acting on behalf of employers needed a letter of authority from the employer, otherwise claims could not be submitted.
Mafata suggested a lot of the dissatisfaction with the system came from these third parties. He said there were also many unhappy people who had been stopped from fraudulently submitting claims to the fund. “The system works if you are registered as a user of the system,” he said.
Mafata noted that under the old system there were 15,000 active external users but only 2,277 in the new system who had submitted the required letter of authority.
Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi has assured members of Parliament that the change is part of the department’s efforts to clean up the beleaguered Fund. Addressing Parliament’s portfolio committee on employment and labour, the Mail & Guardian reports Nxesi said Compensation Fund commissioner Vuyo Mafata has his “full support”. “He is leading a major clean-up campaign at the fund, which has long been the target of fraud and corruption.”
The fund compensates workers who are injured on duty, or sick from diseases contracted at work. It also compensates the families of workers who die as a result of these injuries or diseases. Last year the fund’s board received audit disclaimers because of its inability to collect contributions effectively and validate claims.
Nxesi said the new system was introduced to “strengthen controls”. “During the transition there will be glitches … And we should not be defensive about the glitches … But the new system is up and running and it is working. It is not operating at 100%, but we are certainly on an upwards trajectory.”
According to IWAG spokesperson, Tim Hughes, the SAP system should have been live since 1 October 2019, but CompEasy was “dead on arrival”. “The Web site never worked. The system was never parallel-tested with the old one as you would expect when the stakes are this high,” Hughes is quoted in an ITWeb report as saying.
“As a result, about 150,000 working-class South Africans who have been injured or disabled on duty since mid-2019 have been left out in the cold. And to make matters worse, the state granted a R300m tender plus five years of maintenance fees to Britehouse, a division of Dimension Data, to implement this SAP-based system that is not working.”
The report says although SAP acknowledged the Compensation Fund is running the company’s software product, the company said it did not implement the system. The implementer, Britehouse, said the system “is operational and processing claims and the number of claims processed continues to increase daily”.
[link url="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2020-03-01-no-system-problems-at-compensation-fund-says-commissioner/"]Full Business Day report[/link]
[link url="https://mg.co.za/article/2020-03-02-broken-claims-system-will-fix-compensation-fund-corruption/"]Full Mail & Guardian report[/link]
[link url="https://www.itweb.co.za/content/wbrpO7gYmAVqDLZn"]Full ITWeb report[/link]
See also
[link url="https://www.medicalbrief.co.za/archives/moribund-compensation-fund-forces-some-physios-and-ots-to-retrench-or-close/"]Moribund Compensation Fund forces some physios and OTs to retrench or close[/link]
[link url="https://www.medicalbrief.co.za/archives/compensation-fund-failure-to-pay-medical-bills-augurs-badly-for-nhi/"]Compensation Fund failure to pay medical bills augurs badly for NHI[/link]