Inefficiency and negligence at the Commission for Occupational Injuries and Diseases has caused a multimillion-rand backlog in the payment of claims to doctors who treat workers, the Democratic Alliance charged on Wednesday.
Commission staff’s ”outrageous neglect” of their work is denying proper medical care to many workers injured on duty, DA health spokesperson Dianne Kohler-Barnard told a media conference at Parliament.
Claims are being processed by the commission at an ”absurdly slow pace”. A third of those lodged last year were paid four months or more after they were received, despite legislation stipulating a maximum of three months.
”The commission owes various providers R411-million,” Kohler-Barnard said.
Many doctors and hospitals are increasingly reluctant to offer their services to the commission.
An orthopaedic surgeon in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, is owed R1,5-million, and ”is now refusing to treat any more patients”.
Kohler-Barnard said problems include:
- an unacceptably and unreasonably slow rate of medical claims processing;
- the apparent deliberate placing of obstacles in claimants’ way to encourage them to give up; and
- staff showing more interest in minimising workload than helping injured workers.
The DA has written to Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana and Public Protector Lawrence Mushwana, calling for an investigation into the ”immense inefficiency and outright negligence” of the commission.
The party will also pose a series of parliamentary questions on the issue, and ask that the commissioner appear before the health and labour portfolio committees at Parliament to explain the situation.
”The commission is yet another example of a government bureaucracy whose non-performance makes the lives of the people who depend on it an utter misery.
”In the case of the commission, these are generally poor, blue-collar workers who do not have the means to pay for proper health care and insurance themselves, and who risk losing their jobs as a result of being disabled by inadequate treatment,” Kohler-Barnard said. — Sapa