Dear Portfolio Committee on Employment and Labour,

To whom can assist 04/03/2025

Good day

I, Francois Herbst, registered as a Medical Orthotist and prosthetist practicing in Bethlehem Free-State, hereby lay a formal complaint against the COMPENSATION FUND.

My practice has been seeing injury on duty (IOD) patients since 2015. From 2015 until 2021 we used a 3rd party COID-link. We were requested by the Compensation Fund to register directly with them on CompEasy. We duly complied with the request, but it was not smooth sailing at all getting my practice registered, the matter was reported to SCOPA and the registration was done after a year of struggling.

During 2022-2024 we had issues with the registration of our banking details and on more than one occasion we were requested to submit the original bank forms. We duly complied and received confirmation that the correct details were loaded.
We then encountered another problem that accounts were shown on CompEasy but did not reflect in the practice bank account. A total of R462 324,92 was paid into a Capitec account that I am not the owner of. This matter was reported in March 2024, but I only received a request for an affidavit from the Fraud unit on 27 Feb 2025. I was informed that the investigation will first need to be completed before the monies can be paid out to me. Even though we were not involved in this matter, why should we wait for these accounts to be settled and carry the financial burden?

Currently the total outstanding account owed to me is R1 503 018.59 that we have invoiced up until April 2024. We stopped the submission of accounts for 2 reasons.
1. Continuous system errors including “softblocks” due to wrong banking details
2. For all submitted accounts, we are liable to pay VAT on the invoice even though we are not receiving any money.
We are registered with SARS as a VAT vendor, but some accounts are still being paid excluding VAT even though we have sent through our VAT registration certificate and the invoices show the VAT amount and VAT number.

For our Prosthetic patients Pre-Auth needs to be obtained with the monetary values included in the quotation. Once the prosthesis is completed and the patient and case manager has signed off these accounts are to be paid, but we have a couple outstanding for many years. These patients need to be “serviced” annually with consumables, but their previous accounts are outstanding for years.


I have followed all channels to get this matter resolved starting with our branch in Bethlehem then to the provincial office and then at National level. Lack of communication or results from the director and deputy Director of finance has led to direct communication with the Commissioner, still to no avail.

In my practice we work with injured and disabled persons, but the issues with the compensation fund is currently hindering my ability to assist these patients with their much-needed components and services as they are not complying to their own rules and NOT acting in the interest of the patients.

I also have a patient that was amputated in 1987 and received his prosthesis through the compensation fund for years until 2018, but suddenly, he is not registered on the compensation fund database and no person is able to help us obtain a claim number since 2016.

This financing model is totally unsustainable as a small practice, as we have suppliers that needs to be paid for the devices and components purchased from them.

Your assistance will be highly appreciated
Please feel free to contact me should you require any additional information.