How the road fund collapsed

SCOPA: DIRECT CLAIMS DISMANTLED, FIRING OF LAWYERS

- Sipho Mabena

The dismantling of the direct claims model, as well as the mass firing of attorneys, plunged the embattled Road Accident Fund (RAF) into crisis, parliament's standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) heard yesterday.

The decisions crippled services to accident victims and triggered a climate of fear and mass suspensions.

The fund's former senior manager, Christinah Mthethwa, outlined in her affidavit how years of progress in bringing the RAF closer to road accident victims were abruptly reversed from 2019 onwards - decisions she said undermined service delivery to victims, erased effective operational systems and weakened the RAF.

RAF's direct claims strategy, launched in 2014, was meant to free the fund from its dependence on expensive external lawyers.

Claimants could lodge claims directly with the RAF instead of through attorneys, cutting legal fees and improving access for the poor, she said.

The strategy quickly bore fruit, with direct claims rising from 22 000 in 2014, to nearly 41 000 by 2019, according to Mthethwa, the fund's axed manager for direct claims who also served as acting senior manager for litigation.