Compensation Fund blames missing records for injured steelworker’s 19-year wait for claim

The Compensation Fund has responded to its handling of a former steelworker’s long-running injury-on-duty (IOD) claim, saying it remains willing to consider the case but has been unable to confirm that his injuries were sustained at work. The Citizenhas reported howIsaac Michael Moletsi spent almost two decades seeking compensationafter an alleged workplace accident while working for a steel company in Chamdor, Gauteng, when a runaway overhead crane allegedly crushed him at work. Moletsi has maintained that he was injured at work and that his claim was caught up in the liquidation of his former employer.

Compensation Fund spokesperson Hloni Mpaka said they have not formally rejected the claim, arguing that the alleged workplace accident has never been adequately confirmed in terms of the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act (COIDA). She explained that a claim for compensation in terms of the COID Act must be confirmed by the employer and supported by a first medical report, as well as progress and final medical reports. While the Fund acknowledges the circumstances of the employer being liquidated and company records having been destroyed, Mpaka said the Fund remained willing to adjudicate a claim for benefits should Moletsi be in a position to provide medical history records for the period around 2008 that confirm the alleged workplace accident.

She said the Fund remains obligated to confirm the injury as a workplace accident in terms of the COID Act and to satisfy procedures and audit requirements for the adjudication of such injury-on-duty claims. According to the Mpaka, Moletsi approached it in 2023 after his former employer had gone into liquidation. The Fund says it requested medical records, a payslip from the time of the injury and a certified copy of his identity document on 28 February 2024.

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Moletsi responded on 19 March 2024, providing his ID and radiology reports dating to 2017 and 2019 relating to hip replacement surgery. But she said those documents did not establish that the surgery was linked to an injury sustained at work. A further complication emerged in December 2024, when Moletsi reportedly told the Fund that he had been injured when he was 44, which would place the alleged accident at around 2008.

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