Widows� forum to help spouses access claims
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Wednesday April 5, 2017 16:18
According to a representative from Ditshwanelo Kitso Phiri, the forum will create an opportunity for stakeholders to review the mechanisms put in place to address some of the challenges experienced by widows of ex-mineworkers in accessing their spouses unclaimed cross border social security benefits.
He said that would be done through facilitation of a policy dialogue between widows of ex-miners, funds and Government officials on national issues affecting them, engagement with the funds on the opportunities for partnership with ex-mineworkers associations, facilitation of discussions with policy organs such as the SADC National Committees on regional interventions related to the portability of social security and compensation benefits, discussion on the progress and sustainability of post employment support programmes across the region from donors/support agencies and progress to date since the first widows forum in 2015.
“The thriving South African economy has attracted a lot of migrant workers to seek better opportunities to overcome poverty in their own countries and also to improve their livelihood. Historically, foreign workers migrated to South Africa through bilateral labour agreements.
The majority of these workers being unskilled and semi-skilled were attracted to work in the mining industry, as cheap labour,” he said.
He said it was however an unfortunate reality that most of those migrant mineworkers who spent years building up the South African economy and working under unhealthy conditions in the mining industry, had neither claimed social security benefits nor compensation related to occupational diseases or illnesses.
Phiri added that in instances where those people attempted to claim, their attempts ran futile and it took long periods to process such claims. He also pointed out that many of those miners did not live long immediately after they returned home.
“The widows are further confronted with challenges in accessing social security and compensation benefits on behalf of their spouses due to low literacy levels, which in most instances disqualifies them from meeting administrative requirements.
Their lack of information and understanding about institutions and funds where claims are disbursed, information on eligibility, procedures and guidelines for making claims further exacerbates the problem,” he said.
Phiri explained that Article 6 of the SADC Charter on the Fundamental Social Rights provides for equal opportunities for both men and women and applies in particular to access to employment, remuneration, working conditions, social protection, education, vocational training and career development. F
urthermore, Phiri explained that the Charter also provides for reasonable measures being developed to enable men and women to reconcile their occupational and family obligations.
“It is therefore in accordance with such law that states ought to implement reasonable measures that seek to curb the existence of these barriers that make it difficult for widows of mineworkers to access their spousal benefits in accordance with Article 8, which states that every worker in the region shall at the time of retirement, enjoy resources affording him or her a decent standard of living,” he said.