The Road Accident Fund expressed support on Thursday for a new system to compensate road accident victims, but resisted calls for its own demise.
Denying that the RAF management was ”in a mess”, chief executive Humphrey Kgomongwe said the fund could play a critical role in the evolution of a new scheme.
A commission of inquiry — headed by Judge Kathleen Satchwell — has recommended that the cash-strapped and crisis-ridden RAF be scrapped in favour of a different system.
Kgomongwe told reporters in Pretoria: ”We are … not at one with the commission on phasing the current fund out.” Several of the commission’s recommendations were in line with legislative changes proposed by the RAF itself, he said.
The RAF had, in fact, introduced some of the ideas put forward by the commission.
”We are baffled by the commission’s seeming contradiction in making recommendations similar to the fund’s own proposals and practices, yet at the same time seeing no room for the fund to be the founding structure of the new scheme.”
Satchwell handed the commission’s 2067-page report to the government in December after four years of research. The document was submitted to Parliament last month. – Sapa