As at the end of February this year, the Tshiamiso Trust celebrated a year of accelerated delivery for the Trust, as it reached the milestone of the first R1 billion paid out to 11 341 beneficiaries.
The Tshiamiso Trust’s held a virtual annual general meeting on Friday to update on the performance of the Trust, set up following the R5 billion settlement agreement to compensate mineworkers who got permanent lung damage from silicosis and tuberculosis (TB) from their work in the mines, or their families if the mineworker was deceased.
At the end of the first year of full operations in the financial year 2021/2022, Tshiamiso reported R194.5 million paid to 2 168 claimants.
The Trust chairperson Dr May Hermanus said on Friday that the performance of the past year, with some of the extremely challenging restrictions still in place, highlighted the resilience of the stakeholder relationships they had built and the success of the infrastructure and teams we have put in place to carry out their mandate.
Dr Munyadziwa Kwinda, who was appointed as CEO, effective from June, said Tshiamiso celebrated a banner year in 2022/2023 and had made considerable progress in the second year of operation.
“I am honoured to announce that we not only exceeded our target of 10000 claims, but also achieved the bold stretch target of the first R1 billion in payments. This represents an increase of over 400% on the payments achieved in the previous financial year. Achieving R1 billion in payments in just two years after claim lodgements began is a testament to the people, processes, systems and partners that we have put in place,” Kwinda said.
As at the end of February this year, being the end of the Financial Period, 111 451 claims were lodged, and the total number of Benefit Medical Examinations (BMEs) completed was 46 736. This was achieved by utilising a network of fixed BME sites and mobile sites on rotation. Some 55 493 claims have been medically certified to date, of which 28% (15 555) were found to be medically eligible.
Hermanus said the 2022/2023 period also marked substantial engagements with governments of other countries to unlock access to potential claimants and the ability to process claims for their citizens.
She said setting up operations in other countries was a complex task, which took time given the requirements of and the dependencies on government structures in relation to service provider requirements.
“It is imperative that we operate within the processes and protocols of each country to ensure that we are compliant and have the support of governments, health departments, service providers, ex-mineworkers’ representatives, and other stakeholders in these countries,” Hermanus said.
Tshiamiso said despite best efforts, the Reviewing Authority to adjudicate disputed claims was not operationalised during this reporting period as there was a very small percentage of claimants (2% of all claims lodged), which had lodged a dispute.
However, as of May, the Reviewing Authorities had commenced operations.
The administration budget as agreed in the Settlement Agreement and Court Order is capped at R845 million for the lifetime of the Trust.
It said that with the high rate of claims being found ineligible because they did not meet the criteria for medical eligibility (around 70% of all claims certified to date), many claimants remained frustrated and disappointed.
One of the reasons why so many claims were being found ineligible was because the criteria for TB claims for mineworkers who were deceased before the effective date (December 10, 2019) were incredibly stringent, the Trust said. It said the requirement was not only that there needs to be evidence of the compensable TB being the main cause of death, but that the mineworker must have died from the compensable TB within a year of the last qualifying risk work shift.
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