The Road Accident Fund has expressed frustration at being exploited by groupings such as lawyers, insurance companies and foreign nationals whom it says are taking advantage of loopholes in its founding act.
CEO Collins Letsoalo briefed the media at the fund’s headquarters in Centurion where he announced the launch of a public campaign to find and assist hundreds of thousands people he said lodged claims before 2021 which are yet to be concluded owing to outstanding documents.
Letsoalo said among other tricks employed by lawyers is deliberately keeping information supplied by claimants only to submit it at the eleventh hour in order to drive up legal costs and to bully the fund into not undertaking necessary verification.
“We have three years for a claim to prescribe and most people don’t wait for three years. Within the first weeks they would have gone to a lawyer and said we have been injured and we want to claim but that information will be kept and submitted three weeks before it prescribes and suddenly it must be urgent,” said Letsoalo who is adamant that amendments to the RAF act are needed.
Letsoalo also questioned some of the court judgements issued against the RAF saying it has become common for the fund to lose against unscrupulous lawyers. “ there’s some places where we take these things and we already know that when there’s someone, certain judges you know that we are going to lose and we will say we might as well prepare to appeal and that is why we are appealing some of these matters because we don’t understand,” he said.
Letsoalo said the requirement for foreign nationals claiming compensation to provide proof that they were in the country ( legally) when they were injured has seen claims in that category go down significantly.
“The law says if the RAF does not validate a claim within sixty days it is deemed valid in law in all respects, it can’t go any crazier than that, how can that be,” said Letsoalo urging South Africans to comment on a bill sponsored by the RAF which is meant to eliminated loopholes that have seen the fund pay even foreign nationals.
“The claimant that got the highest payout out of the road accident fund which was R512 million is a Swiss national,” said Letsoalo at pains to make the point that South Africans are expected to have their own medical insurance when traveling to other countries and that it is time for the country to do the same.