The article “Workplace injury compensation shambles” (November 16) is fraught with inaccuracies, lack of contextual understanding, personal vilification and semantic engineering designed to give a negative impression of the compensation office. And, sadly, defamatory. Malicious inaccuracies include, inter alia, the number of staff employed, reasons for the backlogs, the “motives of the commissioner”, the administration of claims procedures and the implementation of legislation.
Through semantic engineering twisting of facts, structural silence on information that would otherwise defeat the article’s objectives, etc and bad journalism, the public has been misled. The article inaccurately claims that there are “only 27” people working for the commission (Fact: 567 full-time staff and 64 contract workers) but its greatest sin is its semantic manipulations to vilify the commissioner and her staff.
Yelling that “the commissioner and her staff have an interest in ensuring that the fund is not exhausted by the claims … it is also understandable why there appears to be no motivation to increase the number of staff” the defamatory intentions are obvious.
Can the M&G’s assertion that “none of the families of the 11 killed in the infamous factory fire of last year were told they might be entitled to additional compensation” be trusted? No! Because the families were duly advised on their legal rights.
Backlog of cases and delays in claims finalisation are attributed personally to the commissioner. Fact: the backlog stems from manual old systems (an electronic system is to be launched within a week), workload due to integration of cases from the “homelands” yet no increase in staff (investigations into human resources needs of the commission is under way), etc.
No connection is made between the prevention of fraudulent claims (to which funds are vulnerable), the investigation of each claim (which obviously slows down the payment process) and the objective of making the compensation fund financially sustainable.
“Good name in man and woman, dear my Lord, is the immediate jewel of their souls; he that filches of me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed,” says a Shakespearean character. The article leaves the commissioner, Ms Bongi Magojo, “poor indeed”. Eddie Mohoebi, Department of Labour