The Compensation Fund, an entity of the Department of Labour and Employment, appeared before the Portfolio Committee on Labour and Employment this week to table its second quarter report for the current financial year.
The report reflected largely the challenges that the fund is addressing and which are systemic in nature, and due to those problems, the fund has migrated from Mehluko to a new system called COPEASY.
Although the fund acknowledges the teething problems in the new system, efforts are being made to ensure that claims are processed and paid on time.
The committee was informed that there are service providers who have not been paid for six months, and that threatens the closure of their businesses.
The department, through the Minister, committed to ensuring that the new system is working properly for the benefit of the workers who are injured on duty to be compensated in time, and also to ensure that the system is not corrupted.
The Minister committed his office and the department to address all the complaints from the service providers to be addressed on a case by case basis.
The committee will undertake an oversight visit to the fund in order to have a better understanding of the new claims systems. The committee is satisfied with the briefing it got from the fund regarding the new challenges that riddle the new system.
The committee is happy with the successful migration of the fund which it believes elimination of corruption and fraud from the claims process will be thoroughly addressed.
“We hope that the claims will be attended to on time without causing frustration among service providers, but importantly, the ordinary workers who are injured in the workplace, and who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the fund’s services.,” said the Chairperson of the committee, Ms Lindelwa Dunjwa.
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