Administration Chaos Leads to Loss of Injury Payouts

July 14 - Chaos in the administration systems of the Commission for Occupational Injuries and Diseases (COID) has led to thousands of South Africans been left out in the cold and unable to obtain important medication to improve their health and wellbeing. This claim was made by the Democratic Alliance, who pointed out the problem to the media this week.

According to the DA, because two of South Africa's largest hospital groups (Netcare and Medi-Clinic) have not been paid by the COID for their services due to administrative blunders, they have been forced to stop the provision of medication to patients that were injured in workplace accidents.

Many of these patients have now been left in a desperate situation - unable to afford the medication but also unable to continue functioning without it.

The COID is considered a crucial part of the South African social network, handling the cases of over one million accident victims since 2000.

However, there is such a serious backlog in claims in the COID pipeline that the Compensation Fund received a disclaimer of opinion from the country's Auditor-General this year. The AG was simply unable to vouch on the accuracy or existence of claims because of these backlogs that, according to the COID, total over R1.6 billion.

The DA is demanding that a solution be found to help innocent victims of workplace accidents who are unable to afford expensive treatment and who are left suffering because of poor bureaucratic practices.