COIDA Amendment: Protecting workers or avoiding accountability?

As increasing numbers of employees return to the workplace with the easing of lockdown levels, cases of occupationally acquired Covid-19 are likely going to rise again into winter and then persist until a vaccine becomes widely available. It is worried that the Compensation Fund, which has a long and undistinguished history of inefficiency, maladministration and financial mismanagement is going to buckle under the weight of claims. The Compensation Fund is governed under the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act, or COIDA, as it’s known. And in January 2021, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Employment and Labour issued a public call for submissions on the proposed COIDA Amendment Bill. The Bill appears to be something of a curate’s egg, good in parts and bad in others. Michael Avery speaks to Tim Hughes, of the Injured Workers Action Group; Dr Angelique Coetzee, Chairperson of SA's largest doctor organisation, the South African Medical Association; & Pinky Mashiane, President of the United Domestic Workers of South Africa Union.