Road Accident Fund: minister is hindering the appointment of a new board

A question and answer session with the Road Accident Fund (RAF) revealed to parliament's portfolio committee on transport that the RAF board's term of office already expired at the end of July 2009. In other words, the RAF, which is technically insolvent, has been operating without a board for almost four months.

However, instead of appointing a new board as a matter of urgency in order to end this impasse, the Minister of Transport rejected the latest board shortlist on the grounds that the nominations received were "not diverse enough".

The ANC-led government has once again lost all sense of purpose. We need the most qualified and skilled administrators to be appointed at the RAF as soon as possible. The minister's delaying tactics are actively hampering efforts to resolve the situation and decrease the current backlog of payments for personal injury claims.

The RAF has been plagued with problems relating to claim backlogs of R40-billion. In this morning's Cape Times a RAF official described the fund as a "dead man walking" that should be shut down urgently as it had become a "slush fund" for lawyers as opposed to carrying out its mandate to pay out compensation for personal injury claims.

Significantly, the fact that the RAF has had an interim board for the past four months - one of a great many public institutions that do not have permanent leadership - has undoubtedly further undermined its ability to properly carry out its mandate.

The Department of Transport must follow the procedures set out in the RAF Act and appoint a permanent board as a matter of urgency. The DA will be asking questions as to why the process of appointing a permanent board has taken so long, who is responsible for it and what action has been taken against them.

Statement issued by Manny de Freias, MP, Democratic Alliance deputy shadow minister of transport, November 18 2009

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