The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has threatened the Road Accident Fund (RAF) with a 48-hour strike if CEO Collins Letsoalo was not removed from office.

It accused Letsoalo of incompetence and mismanagement of the entity. “We are demanding that RAF CEO Collins Letsoalo must be removed because of the disastrous state of the entity,” it said in a statement.

The union warned that they were mobilising their members for a shutdown of all RAF offices on Thursday.

The march will head to the offices of the National Department of Transport in Pretoria to hand over a memorandum of demands to the Minister of Transport Sindisiwe Chikunga, listing all the problems at the organisation.

Numsa claimed that Letsoalo behaved as if he was untouchable which got the RAF in shambles.

“There is a complete failure to regulate his behaviour, and it seems even the board of the RAF is helpless in the face of his gross incompetence,” it said.

Recently, Numsa called for the boycott of Putco bus services.

As stated in the statement, Numsa explained that the RAF is a public entity whose core function is to compensate victims of road accidents.

According to the union, issues that fuelled the threat of a strike are that the RAF was outsourcing its critical operations to private companies, continued to implement the restructuring of the organisation, had a backlog of unprocessed RAF claims, and violation of the POPI Act because of personal information being in the hands of a third party.

In addition, the union said the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) was seemingly unable to act against Letsoalo, stating that it made detailed submissions to the Parliamentary committee about the mismanagement of the RAF.

“We must also state that Letsoalo is so arrogant that he even blocked Parliament’s oversight committee, Scopa, from entering the RAF premises at the Menlyn offices last year when MPs went to the workplace to conduct inspections,” it said.

Numsa said this was why they resorted to strike action to compel the State to intervene and remove Letsoalo, adding that he was destroying the RAF.

Furthermore, the union called on all RAF workers to down tools on Thursday in support of their demands.

“The struggle is led by workers themselves, and they are the only ones who have the power to give the employer a bloody nose, by withdrawing their labour,” it said.

IOL has tried to get comment from the RAF but to no avail. This story will be updated once a comment is received.

kamogelo.moichela@inl.co.za

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