Pretoria - More than 100 experts who submitted medico-legal reports to the Road Accident Fund (RAF), but are yet to be paid, have joined a campaign to take on the entity.
The experts have also written to Chief Justice-elect Raymond Zondo in this regard.
Their reports are used to assist the courts in determining fair compensation to accident victims.
Director of MMB Made Easy, Mariëtte Minnie-Botbijl, said the RAF continued to use their reports without any intention of paying for them.
According to her, the reports, without payment, remain the intellectual property of the experts.
Minnie-Botbijl, who is leading the group, said: “Even the RAF’s service level agreements state that all intellectual property remains the property of the owner and ownership of any documentation only belongs to the fund once it’s paid for.”
She said this showed the RAF either did not understand its own contracts and directives or wilfully ignored them to dodge their financial obligations.
The group first wrote to Justice Zondo at the beginning of this month to withdraw their completed opinions that had not yet been used in court due to the RAF’s non-payment.
She said it was either a case of non-payment or the RAF charged penalties to reduce the amounts owed.
RAF CEO Collins Letsoalo reacted to this in a letter to various stakeholders, in which he blamed the former panel of attorneys, whom he said at all times were aware of the provisions of the service level agreement but decided to act in contravention thereof.
In a recent radio interview, Letsoalo said: “The law is very clear about who is liable for it. It doesn’t say that we can’t use it.”
Minnie-Botbij said that according to an earlier directive, the RAF embarked on a tender to appoint a panel of medical experts, but the process did not yield the number of service providers required. The RAF then embarked on a second tender to augment the first.
The RAF then contracted with 82 service providers via the first tender. These started to render services from June 23, 2015.
The RAF also decided to use non-contracted service providers where the contracted panel was unable to provide the service timeously.
She said the directive stated the arrangement would apply until the second tender had been awarded. However, the second tender for experts was cancelled.
Following the expiry of the panel of medical experts contract in May 2018, the RAF approached National Treasury for approval of a new engagement model for medical experts.
The panel of attorneys could choose and instruct any medical expert who then invoiced the attorney and claimed the expenses from the RAF.
The RAF then paid the attorneys, who paid the medical experts, she explained.
According to the medical experts, the work they completed on instruction from the RAF’s panel attorneys was used and all their invoices submitted according to the entity’s prescribed tariffs.
They said they were only made aware of “unauthorised” invoices a year after the former panel of attorneys’ contract was terminated.
They questioned why the RAF then accepted and used their medical reports if their appointments were not approved.
Letsoalo, however, slammed the dispute as part of a “concerted effort” to distort what the real issue was.
“The RAF is of the view that the situation of non-payment faced by the medical experts is as a consequence of the negligence of the former panel of attorneys, who at all material times was aware of the provisions of the service-level agreement, but decided to act in contravention thereof,” Letsoalo said.
One of the experts furious about the fact he had not been paid was Johannesburg neurosurgeon Dr Percy Miller.
He earlier told the Pretoria News he was owed millions by the RAF for writing expert reports over the past few years.
“This is no small task and takes up a lot of time. It also often saves the RAF millions,” Miller said.
The Office of the Chief Justice is yet to respond to the letter sent from the experts.
Pretoria News