Pretoria - The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has urged the government to use every cent of the budgeted R10 billion to compensate mineworkers who contracted TB and silicosis solely on those mineworkers and their beneficiaries.
It made the call after the Health Department made a massive announcement this week that it would compensate thousands of mineworkers who contracted the diseases while in the employ of various mining companies in the country.
The government said those who qualified must have worked at these mines between March 1965 and December 2019.
Claimants are expected to undergo screening, verification and medical exams before eligible former mineworkers receive the payment benefits.
The programme began in KwaZulu-Natal on Monday, and will soon move to the Northern Cape, Gauteng, North West and other provinces.
The government called on all former mineworkers or their dependants to visit lodgement sites in the areas where they live.
Claimants are urged to bring along relevant documents, such as a valid South African ID or SADC passport, industry card, service records from the mine they worked at, any available medical records, a death certificate in the case of a deceased mineworker, and an autopsy report, if available.
Commenting on the announcement, the union’s national health and safety secretary, Masibulele Naki, welcomed the move: “This is long overdue. The economy of this country, and those of many of our former colonisers, was built through the blood and sweat of these former mineworkers.
“The filthy-rich capitalists’ shareholders of various mining houses, the majority of whom are citizens of the former colonial masters, continue to enjoy the benefits, while the current and the former mineworkers are sick at home, and some have died as paupers.
“Unfortunately, while the process to compensate the workers is now unfolding, there is a mushrooming of the so-called ‘trust funds’ masquerading as the vanguard of the rights of the mineworkers,” Naki said.
He said those were “trust funds” that had no interests of mineworkers at heart, but were meant to benefit their trustees and their executives.
Naki said the union would reject any “trust funds” that claim to be for the mineworkers.
“We are also calling on the Department of Health to be vigilant and reject those trusts,” he said.
“We frown upon the untransformed and arrogant Tshiamiso Trust Fund, which is led by lily-white board members and does not allow participation of labour unions in their board,” Naki said.
He said Tshiamiso Trust was involved in the compensation of mineworkers, and the union would mobilise its forces, including other progressive trade unions in the mining sector, to demand Tshiamiso Trust be transformed to include labour unions on its board of trustees.
Tshiamiso Trust did not respond to requests to react to the union’s allegations at the time of going to press.
According to Naki: “Every cent of the over R10bn allocated for the compensation of the eligible former mineworkers must be for those mineworkers and/or their beneficiaries, not the other way round.”
He said the union, together with the Department of Health and all other progressive forces, would ensure that all eligible beneficiaries were registered, concluding “nothing about us without us.”
Pretoria News