The Department of Employment and Labour, together with its entities the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) and the Compensation Fund in partnership the Eastern Cape Provincial Government and the Port St Johns Municipality recently concluded a week-long Ex-Mineworkers’ Outreach. The initiative which forms part of the Project Thubalethu is aimed at tracking down unclaimed and unpaid social benefits owed to former mineworkers in the OR Tambo District.
To many families, the money paid out this week could not have come at a more appropriate time. Some of the mineworkers on whose behalf claims had been lodged, did not live to see the outreach; in those cases, the benefits now pass to their dependents, offering a measure of relief to households that carried the weight of illness, injury or loss without the support that was due to them all along.
Commissioner for Occupational Diseases, Barry Kistnasamy, of the Medical Bureau for Occupational Diseases (MBOD) and the Compensation Commissioner for Occupational Diseases (CCOD) put a figure on what remains outstanding in this district alone at an estimated R18 million in unclaimed benefits for ex-mineworkers from Port St Johns.
Nationally, an estimated R10 billion in benefits still sits unclaimed by ex-mineworkers and their dependents. Kistnasamy says bringing these services directly to the communities the mineworkers came from. Is the guaranteed way of getting that money back into the hands it belongs to.
The Department’s Acting Director-General placed the outreach in its historical context, noting that South Africa’s mining industry has long drawn its workforce from rural parts of the country, the Eastern Cape chief among them, fueling decades of labour migration to the mines. “Project Thubalethu is an initiative to roll out services-on-wheels by relevant stakeholders and departments for ex-mineworkers in the Eastern Cape to address unclaimed and unpaid Social Protection Benefits and Occupational Diseases and Injuries claims due to them,” she said.
The Eastern Cape Premier Honorable Oscar Mabuyane struck a similar note, pointing to the roughly 370,000 ex-mineworkers in the province who spent their working lives underground, contributing to an industry that shaped the national economy while exposing many of them to serious occupational hazards. Some contracted silicosis while others died from work related injuries. Integrated outreach programmes like this one, the Premier said, are how government ensures that beneficiaries and their dependents where applicable, finally receive what has long been owed to them.
UIF paid out a total of R1,278, 846.28 in benefits to 277 clients, offering direct financial relief to beneficiaries and in cases where beneficiaries have since died, to their dependants.
Additional 319 ex- mineworkers were assisted with work related injury claims. While over 400 work seekers were assisted with registration on the ESSA database and also received employment counselling
The program also entailed work place inspections which were targeted at the Wholesale and Retail sector, this led to 11 non-compliance orders being issued and 53 contravention notices issued to employers for non-compliance with Basic Conditions of Employment Act Occupational Health and Safety Act.