The Compensation Fund (CF) overpaid R21 million to service providers since October last year, after migrating to a SAP system.
Responding to a question in the National Assembly, labour minister Mildred Oliphant said the CF implemented a new claims management system in October 2011.
“Since the inception of the new system, there has been an incident of overpayment to service providers, whereby a double payment was effected when a payment file was submitted twice to the bank.”
Millions overpaid
The fund has subsequently contacted all affected service providers to recover the overpayment and the recovery process is under way, says Oliphant.
She adds that a total of R21 million was overpaid, and to date an amount of R3 million has been recovered, leaving an amount of R18 million outstanding.
“The fund has since automated this process, which will ensure that a repeat will not occur.”
Billing disaster
The City of Joburg also experienced and continues to experience billing issues, after migrating to a SAP platform.
Residents are being grossly over-billed and unjustly cut off from services, due to challenges with the city's SAP implementation - a project codenamed Phakama. Phakama's aim was to move the city's disparate and legacy systems onto one platform.
However, SAP previously said the billing crisis plaguing the city has nothing to do with its software and it was not involved in the post-implementation phase of the Phakama project.
The company did not respond to requests for comment on the latest billing issue by the time of publication.
Detecting duplicates
Oliphant was also questioned about the SAP system not accepting running accounts and the impact this billing change would have on the CF's finances.
“Service providers submit invoices electronically to medical aids on a daily basis as per individual treatment and date, and not as running accounts,” responded Oliphant.
She explained that running accounts were previously used on the old CF system, but have been re-aligned on the new SAP system.
“The SAP system has been designed to detect duplicates and exceptions, and the invoice number is unique to a treatment and service date, which also assists in fraud prevention. The impact of this change has resulted in the early identification of possible overpayments and duplicates.”
She also said the need to submit invoices, rather than running accounts, was gazetted in 2010 as one of the minimum requirements for submission of an account.
The CF provides compensation for disablement caused by occupational injuries or diseases sustained or contracted by employees in the course of their employment, or for death resulting from such injuries or diseases.
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