BL Premium reports that MPs heard on Tuesday that the government was struggling to trace almost 75,000 former miners who were owed R1.3bn in compensation for lung diseases contracted at work.
Most of the miners were assessed more than two decades ago, during an era characterised by poor record keeping and extensive delays, health department compensation commissioner Barry Kistnasamy said when presenting the Mines and Works Compensation Fund’s 2025/26 strategic plan to parliament’s portfolio committee on health. Few records are available for older claims, despite the legal requirement that clinical records be retained for 40 years. A total of 66,000 claims approved before 2005 have yet to be paid because the Compensation Commission for Occupational Diseases (CCOD) doesn’t know how to contact the beneficiaries, or even if they are still alive. About a third of the approved claims are for migrant workers from neighbouring states, and a third more are for former miners from the Eastern Cape. Kistnasamy appealed to MPs to support a high-level imbizo to garner political support for a renewed push to find eligible claimants and pay them their dues. “We have the money but we can’t track and trace the individuals, even though we have tried desperately,” he lamented. The Compensation Fund, from which claims are paid, is in a sound financial position, and had assets of just less than R6bn at the end of the 2024/25 financial year. The CCOD has in recent years dramatically improved its systems and now takes just three months to conduct a medical examination, assess claims for compensation, and pay out eligible beneficiaries. It has paid out R1.98bn to claimants over the past nine years.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tamar Kahn at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
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