More than 70 medical professionals have appealed to Transport Minister Barbara Creecy for help after failure by the Road Accident Fund to pay them what they’re owed, in some cases, for as long as seven years.
In a letter to Creecy, they appealed for her urgent intervention, asking her to “install a leadership in the RAF which is able to carry out its proper functioning with integrity and honesty … we are hopeless and tired”, they wrote.
The letter, dated 12 July, was a follow-up to one written in early June to the previous Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga – to which they had no response, reports GroundUp.
Since then, dozens more specialists, including surgeons, psychologists and occupational therapists – collectively owed more than R150m – have added their signatures to the document.
But the fund says it owes them nothing.
“The same people rehash this topic every time there’s a new Minister of Transport,” said RAF head of corporate communications McIntosh Polela.
He said the experts had not been appointed by the fund but “allegedly by its former panel of attorneys”.
The service level agreement with the attorneys specifically stated that medical experts could only be engaged upon written authorisation of the fund. And the fund would not be liable for any fees charged without this authorisation.
He said the vast majority of the experts’ unpaid claims had not been authorised by the fund. This was due to the negligence of former panel attorneys.
But in the letter to Creecy, clinical psychologist Monique Kok said the expert appointments were legal. And, she said, their reports were being used in courts to assist in settling matters.
The fund, she said, was “finding new and cunning ways of explaining and nullifying the expert’s authority to have performed such assessment”.
She added that each assessment had been done after some form of written instruction, either from the RAF directly or their panel of attorneys.
“The experts have never acted on their own accord and … somehow magically found the current claimants, and performed assessments that cost time and resources, without instruction from the RAF or their attorneys.”
Kok said the fund’s refusal to pay their invoices had had a dire impact, with some going out of business and losing their homes.
In the follow-up letter to Creecy, psychologist Chris Sampson said the experts wanted a meeting with the Minister.
“It would appear that the organisation’s (and its leader’s) treatment of its own appointed experts gives the impression it has been allowed to become a law unto itself and from court cases it further appears that it refuses to pay claimants, experts or abide by court orders.”
Sampson said the experts conducted “painstaking investigations” and did extensive reports which were being used by the fund, and yet were waiting seven years later to be paid.
They had paid out of their own pockets the significant costs of translators, transcribers, equipment and testing material.
“We believe that the state and specifically, your Ministry, has a duty to intervene in what has become a well-documented failure, where this statutory body has not carried out its stipulated functions due to either, incompetence, poor leadership, arrogance and/or a fundamental evasion of responsibility and fiduciary duties,” he said.
Sampson told GroundUp he personally was owed about R3m. Payments had become sporadic since about 2017, and after the pandemic, had completely dried up.
“They come up with a multitude of excuses. They claim we didn’t deliver the reports on time. They repeatedly lose invoices. They say the payments are not loaded on their system… They also accuse us of charging above the tariff – when they set the tariff.”
Sampson said litigation, for most, was not an option. “We don’t have deep pockets. But we cannot throw away seven years of hard slog.”
Creecy’s office has acknowledged receipt of the two letters but attempts by GroundUp to get comment were unsuccessful.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
More medical experts join battle against RAF CEO over unpaid R150m
Neurologist lashes RAF chief’s ‘pitiful and preposterous excuses’
RAF revolt: Experts withdraw medico-legal opinions over non-payment
RAF non-payments bringing practices to their knees
RAF’s non-payment to health facility risks lives – DA