THE Tshiamiso Trust, which is responsible for carrying out the terms of the R5 billion settlement between six mining companies and thousands of gold mine workers who contracted silicosis and tuberculosis in South African mines, yesterday said it had processed the first batch of more than 100 compensation payments to claimants, beyond December’s pilot payments.
It said the payments made totalled R9 074 523.80. Compensation amounts ranged from R25 000 to R250 000.
This tranche of payments followed five-and-a-half months after the operationalisation of its claims management system in February
Tshiamiso chief executive Daniel Kotton said: “We are gratified that the Tshiamiso Trust has reached a point in its development that the deserving gold mineworkers or their dependants, who have suffered so much, are beginning to receive the compensation to which they are entitled. We undertake to continue as rapidly as is humanly possible.”
The Tshiamiso Trust said it recognised the impatience expressed by many claimants about the time it had taken for this point to have arrived, since the settlement agreement was reached in 2018.
Reasons for the delay included a long and complex court-approved Trust Deed, an eight-step claim process, and the logistical and organisational cross-border infrastructure that the Trust had had to establish, complicated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
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