MORE than R47 billion (US$3 billion) in unclaimed benefits belonging to over 4.8 million migrant workers, including Zimbabweans, who contributed labour to South Africa’s mining industry have remained unclaimed in the neighbouring country, a report has revealed.
NATHAN GUMA
The fund is meant to compensate workers who sustained occupational injuries and diseases. Many of them were employed under the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA), also known as “Wenela”.
South Africa has been reliant on migrant labour for a long time. According to the World Bank, over one-third of its mineworkers came from neighbouring countries, namely Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe during the Covid-19 era.
Currently, there are approximately half a million active mineworkers in South Africa, with about 40% coming from neighbouring countries, according to the latest report by the Southern Africa Resource Watch (SARW) titled “Mapping of Mineworkers and the Portability of Social Benefits in the Sadc Region”.
The number of ex-mineworkers rose from about two million in 2014 to 4.8 million in 2022, thereby expanding the mining community at large, but most are failing to access the compensation.
Findings by SARW show that unclaimed benefits have been accumulating exponentially, while paid benefits have dropped drastically between 2009 and 2018.
The highest pay-off was in 2014 with paid benefits reaching R7 760 000, against a total of R36 100 000 million unclaimed benefit assets for the same year, according to the report.
From there, the number of unclaimed benefits fluctuated from R3 810 000, R4 290 000, R5 240 000 and R1 830 000 between 2015 and 2018.
The number of mining community members with unclaimed benefits has also continued to increase, while that of paid beneficiaries has continually dwindled.
According to the report, there was a 3.15 million increase in workers with unpaid benefits between 2009, and 2018, while paid beneficiaries rose by 700 000 from a paltry 200 000 to 900 000 in the same period.
“Numerous challenges have been implicated in the inaccessibility of the social security benefits in South Africa. Lack of knowledge and awareness by migrant workers and their dependents regarding the social security benefits to which they are entitled, available schemes and the procedure to access them. Most employers have been using an ineffective record system by employers, especially in the past. At the point of employment, minimum information was collected about each employee’s contact details and dependants, which makes it difficult to trace them when the need arises,” the report reads.
“There is a risk that several migrant mineworkers could be retrenched, due to Covid-19, and the pool of unclaimed benefits is likely to increase, adding to the billions of unclaimed social security benefits reported each year by social security funds and compensation schemes in South Africa.”
In addition: “Excessive and cumbersome documentation and paperwork are required by the different schemes and social security funds. The application process is time-consuming and expensive, particularly for ex-miners and dependents of deceased miners, for example, transport costs and at times engagement of consultants or advisors,” reads part of the report.
Most migrant workers, including Zimbabweans, have been subject to occupational injuries of varying magnitude, infectious and non-infectious occupational diseases such as tuberculosis and silicosis, as well as deprivation of certain basic human rights that negatively impact workers’ health and psychosocial well-being.
Zimbabwe, being a major labour exporter to South Africa with an estimated three million people resident in the neighbouring country, has been negotiating for repatriation of the compensation fund.
“We are yet to hold a meeting with Tsiamiso Trust. They are a grouping that was created to administer compensation to the entire Sadc region. The trust is going to be representing countries that contributed labour to South Africa,” said Lungelwe Mkhwananzi, president of the Ex-Wenela Miners’ Association of Zimbabwe.
Some countries working with the trust have already had their compensation processes attended to, The NewsHawks has learnt.
