Medical experts seek transport minister’s intervention in RAF payment crisis

Governance at the Road Accident Fund (RAF) is something that has to be sorted out “as a matter of priority”, says newly-appointed Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy.

“That is a matter that once I have settled, I will be giving my attention to,” she said on the sidelines of the Southern African Transport Conference in Pretoria last week.

Creecy was responding to a question from Moneyweb about whether she would prioritise a letter written on behalf of a group of more than 70 medical experts to former minister of transport Sindisiwe Chikunga in June 2023, and a follow-up letter to Creecy last week for assistance in obtaining payment of hundreds of millions of rand allegedly owed to them by the RAF.

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These medical experts, ranging from surgeons to psychologists and occupational therapists, have renewed their efforts to get payment from the RAF for expert medico-legal reports they compiled and provided to the fund to assist it and the courts in determining appropriate compensation for claimants who were injured in motor vehicle accidents.

‘RAF stealing intellectual property’

Mariëtte Minnie, whose firm processes and administers the accounts of some of these medical experts, told Moneyweb on Friday that the RAF has owed these experts hundreds of millions of rand since 2015.

Minnie said nothing happened after she sent her first email on this issue to Chikunga in June 2023.

She said the Department of Transport (DoT) said a deputy director-general, whom she did not name, would come back to them, but they never received a response to their email despite trying to follow up on their request for assistance.

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Minnie said these medical experts are now hoping to have a meeting with Creecy to discuss this issue.

She claimed the “RAF is stealing their intellectual property” by not paying these medical experts for their reports.

Stakeholders ‘treated with contempt’

The open letter sent to Creecy said that since the appointment of current RAF CEO Collins Letsoalo, the situation for medical experts and plaintiffs has deteriorated, and stakeholders – including the plaintiffs, experts and even the courts – have been treated with contempt.

“It would appear that the organisation (and its leader’s) treatment of its own appointed experts gives us the impression that it has been allowed to become a law unto itself and from court cases it further appears that he refuses to pay claimants, experts or abide by court orders.

“The challenges present at the RAF are well known and after exhausting other options we now seek your assistance in an open letter to resolve non-payment to the experts.

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“This refusal to pay experts for painstaking investigations and extensive reports has had a detrimental effect on our livelihoods, employees, families, relationships, physical and mental health,” according to the open letter.

“Many experts have not received payment for seven or more years, making it almost impossible to survive.

“The RAF has come up with one unjustifiable excuse after another to defend not paying the experts for assessment reports, while it has at the same time continued to use the very same reports as evidence in court to settle claims and bolster its arguments.

“In addition, we the experts have incurred and paid out of our own pockets for other significant costs, including that of translators, transcribers, equipment and testing material, without receiving payment from the RAF,” it said.

Call for new RAF leadership

The medical experts implored Creecy to intervene “in this disastrous situation and install a leadership in the RAF that is able to carry out the proper functioning of the entity with integrity and honesty”.

“We believe that the state, and specifically your ministry, has a duty to intervene in what has become a well-documented failure, where this statutory body has not carried out its stipulated functions due to either, incompetence, poor leadership, arrogance and/or a fundamental evasion of responsibility and fiduciary duties.

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“We humbly call upon your offices for a meeting to discuss how the RAFs’ own service providers are being treated and with a solution for the long outstanding payments.

“The aim is also to discuss the importance of medical experts to protect the interests of the RAF,” it said.

Panel of attorneys blamed

The dispute between the medical experts and the RAF has been ongoing for several years.

The RAF previously claimed the medico-legal reports were improperly commissioned, and commissioned without proper authorisation.

The fund also attributed the situation to the negligence of the former panel of attorneys and claimed the attorneys had acted contrary to the service level agreement they had signed with the RAF, and the fund was not liable for the payment of reports that had not been properly commissioned.

The RAF said on Sunday it would only be able to respond on Monday to Moneyweb’s request for comment on the contents of the medical experts’ letter to the minister.

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Minnie claimed the RAF relied on a service-level agreement between the RAF and its then-panel of attorneys, but the RAF subsequently scrapped the panel.

She said this agreement, which was signed in 2014, stated that panel attorneys must obtain prior authorisation from the RAF to instruct an expert.

She added that the RAF in 2015 appointed a panel of experts, but there were insufficient experts on this panel, and an RAF directive was issued allowing attorneys to appoint medical experts who were not on the panel if none of the experts on the panel were available.

Minnie said new panels of experts were appointed again in 2018 and 2021 when these contracts expired, but there were still insufficient experts on the panel, and other experts could be appointed in terms of a RAF directive if the experts on the panel were not available.

RAF governance issues

Meanwhile, the RAF is still facing governance issues related to its 2020/2021 annual financial results after failing in April this year with its high court application to review and set aside the Auditor-General’s (AG) disclaimer of these financial results and to declare the disclaimer invalid and unlawful.

The AG issued the disclaimer because the RAF had adopted a different accounting standard, which resulted in a reduction in the fund’s liabilities from more than R300 billion to about R30 billion.

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A previous RAF board rejected directives from Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) not to proceed with litigation against the AG about the appropriate accounting standard to be used.

This led to then Scopa chair Mkhuleko Hlengwa stating in February this year: “There is a strong basis for charging the RAF board of directors, including the CEO, with dereliction of duty and declaring them delinquent directors under the Companies Act.”

This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here