Cape Town - Lawyers and medical practitioners who provide services to Road Accident Fund (RAF) victims say thousands of applications for relief are piling up in the courts, threatening their businesses and leaving victims destitute.
Personal Injury Plaintiff Lawyers Association (Pipla) chairperson Advocate Justin Erasmus said as much as the RAF deflected blame, the reality was that claims were piling up and were just not being paid out. He said this was affecting the most vulnerable people – road accident victims.
Erasmus said the situation had become a complete travesty, and that attorneys were not the only ones complaining.
“Recently, the Private Ambulances Association issued a memorandum to the RAF threatening to withdraw its ambulances belonging to more than 25 emergency medical services if the entity did not honour the R10 million still outstanding.”
He said medical experts had also been hard hit by the twin forces of RAF non-payments and Covid-19, potentially making their practices financially unsustainable.
Erasmus said a recent survey in Legalbrief conducted among occupational therapists (89) and industrial psychologists (21) found that 98% of respondents indicated they could not sustain their practices financially under current measures implemented by the RAF.
Occupational therapist Anne Reynolds said the situation had been compounded by the chaos that was caused by the termination of the RAF’s panel of attorneys.
Reynolds said reports and joint minutes had not been finalised as a result, new appointments had not been made and/or court dates had been delayed.
“All of this has had a significant impact on the victims of road accidents, as well as the experts (both defendant and plaintiff) whose valuable expertise is required to ensure fair and equitable settlements of the road accident victims’ claims,” said Reynolds.
She said the real losers would be the victims.
“With no experts to assess the claims, the likelihood is that claims will be under-settled with little provision for adequate funds to cover medical costs and aids to ensure an optimal quality of life.” Erasmus said the backlog at the RAF had been exacerbated by Covid-19.
“When almost every private sector company was making arrangements for staff to work remotely at home during the lockdown, no one was able to interact with any RAF staff during this period, which means the fund is facing an even bigger backlog.”
He said with so many complaints of non-payment being aired, it was difficult to understand who was actually being paid from the roughly R2 billion paid to the RAF monthly. “There is just no transparency. It appears much of the money flows to provincial health departments who ironically have now also put in claims against the RAF – essentially subsidising public health care.”
De Broglio Attorneys said they had been working with the RAF for the past eight years and for the first time this year they actually felt scared for their clients.
“Emails are not answered or acknowledged, and phone calls are simply not picked up. Staff in the costs department say they don't even have paper to print on.”
Erasmus said that earlier this year, Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula claimed that the appointment of former Passenger Rail Agency of SA’s chief executive Collins Letsoalo at the RAF would help streamline the organisation, however, Erasmus claimed this had not happened.
Attempts to get comment from RAF spokesperson William Maphutha were unsuccessful.
Cape Argus