In the past five months the Road Accident Fund (RAF) has been criticised for being very slow to process payments due to claimants. But its CEO, Eugene Watson, assured in a press statement that this trend is now a thing of the past.
“All available cash is being put to efficient use, while continued payments to claimants are dependent on the availability of the funding received in the form of the fuel levy, ” said Watson, revealing that claims processing increased by 47% to R22.2bn in the past financial year.
Since June 2014, the RAF was only able to pay claims from the monthly RAF fuel levy income of R1.9bn, but, due to improved productivity and greater numbers of court orders on litigated cases, over R2.5bn worth of claims were prepared and finalised for payment.
Watson said increasing claims demonstrated that something better had to be done regarding improving road safety.