The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) supports the Supreme Court’s findings on the dire state of the Compensation of Occupational Injuries and Diseases Fund and the urgent need for an external investigation into its extremely depressing state of affairs.

Workers struggle to receive compensation due to them for injuries incurred at the workplace.  Families battle to access funds due when their loved ones die at work.  Employers experience endless administrative challenges when registering their employees.  This is exactly the same shameful state of affairs at the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) where workers spend days queuing at the Labour Centres to access their benefits and often wait months and even years to receive them.

For far too long workers have had to deal with these terrible state of affairs with no hope in sight.  COSATU has repeatedly called for urgent interventions on this burning matter at Nedlac and with government, including the President since 2020.  Workers are asking why these two social security funds are not put under Administration once and for all, under certain conditionalities and deploy state enforcement agencies to unearth what exactly and why this shameful state of affairs is allowed to continue from one administration to the other.

COSATU fully endorses the Supreme Court’s damning findings on the state of the Compensation Fund and the urgent need for an independent enquiry into its many crises.  This must be extended to the equally chaotic UIF.  It must not only lead to recommendations on what needs to be done to fix these workers’ insurance funds, but most importantly to their overhauling, cleansing and modernising.

The Federation will be pushing that the Department of Employment and Labour urgently action this progressive finding by the Supreme Court.

Issued by COSATU

Matthew Parks (COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator)

Mobile: 082 785 0687

Email: matthew@cosatu.org.za