By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga and Road Accident Fund (RAF) chief executive officer Collins Letsoalo officially opened the Customer Relationship Management Contact Centre in Midrand.
The new centre’s primary goal is to streamline RAF services, providing claimants with easy access to information about their claims.
Chikunga said for too long the entity had a negative reputation due to organizational challenges that hampered its ability to fulfill its constitutional mandate of administering claims to victims and those affected by accidents on South Africa’s roads.
“The fragmented claiming process, siloed operations, unintegrated ICT systems, and unfavourable organizational culture – among other things – contributed to the current organizational challenge. The RAF got known to be where you can make money out of nothing.”
The establishment of the centre was conceptualized in 2020.
In the first phase of the three-phase rollout of service, the 300 trained agents will facilitate the claims query management, the know your rights component, as well as the compliments and complaints platforms.
In the second phase, the RAF will launch litigation, medical, and pre-claim management components.
“The RAF wants to make sure its ability to collect pre-accident data, so that when a claim comes that information can already be pre-populated. So, we’ll already have your ID number, when the accident happened and we know how many people were injured in that vehicle,” said the fund’s Thembi Masilela.
In line with its theme of 2023 being “The Year of the Claimant”, the fund has committed itself to finalizing claims within three months.
Letsoalo urged claimants to know their rights when seeking assistance from attorneys, adding that the centre also aimed to curb the abuse of the fund and claimants by unscrupulous lawyers.
“I think the lawyers are going to hate this the most, because they tend to take more than what they are supposed to take of the claims, and they actually don’t give the party-party costs to the claimant as is expected.”
The launch takes place a day after the end of the public comment window for the draft Road Accident Fund Amendment Bill 2023 which was released on 8 September by the transport department.
The proposed amendments include a complete restructuring of the RAF, moving away from a “compensation” to a “social benefits” structure. These proposed changes face fierce opposition, with some saying they pose a grave threat to the rights and well-being of accident victims across the country.