Johannesburg - Close to 200 000 public servants are missing out on up to R400m a year in fringe benefits and their unions have not alerted them to the lost fortunes.
These are government employees earning R6 000 and less a month, and they are entitled to free membership of the Government Employees Medical Scheme (Gems).
Public sector trade unions that City Press spoke to last week admitted to having failed to effectively inform their members about what is essentially free medical cover for the most vulnerable state workers.
Since 2006, government employees on salary levels one to five - the lowest income bands in the public service - have enjoyed 100% subsidies on membership of Gems, yet many of them remain without medical cover.
An economist, who did not want to be named, said it was an indictment on unions that they had allowed the most needy in their ranks to go without essential cover that was free.
"It's scandalous...one would have thought that putting the best interests of workers first was the very essence of unions," he said.
He also blamed the government for not automatically loading the workers onto the basic Gems medical plan - Sapphire.
"Nobody in their right mind would have objected," he added.
The lowly paid workers not on Gems are effectively missing out on up to an extra R2 170 of income, which is the maximum monthly subsidy allowed per family.
No meaningful campaigns
"Belonging to Gems would have freed scarce resources for other household expenditure or even savings," said the independent economist.
It would have also brought relief on an already overburdened public health system, he said. "Were all these workers to sign up for Gems, public health facilities would have one million lives less to cater for."
Of all the public sector unions City Press interviewed, none had run any meaningful campaign to create awareness of the free benefit.
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) said it believed Gems was doing enough to alert public servants to the opportunity.
The union's national organiser, Clement Marole, said: "We are doing all we can. We have not had any roadshows, but we report to members during union meetings." He agreed the medical benefit was too significant to forgo.
Public Servants Association deputy general manager Manie de Clercq said his union did not want to appear to be promoting one medical scheme over others.
Success Mataitsane, the general secretary of the National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers (Nupsaw), said his union encouraged qualifying members to take up Gems membership.
"We have not run any specific campaign or roadshow yet. Going forward, we will be doing all we can to ensure that people are members of the scheme," he said.
Phenomenal growth
While the 200 000 workers may be missing out, Gems - which held its inaugural yearly stakeholder symposium this week - has continued to realise phenomenal growth.
Gems principal officer Eugene Watson said: "Many of our new members are on the salary levels one to five, which suggests that the message is getting through to them."
He said membership had grown by 400% in the past 12 months and that such rapid growth had not had an impact on the liquidity of the scheme.
"At present more than 40% of Gems members earn less than R6 000.
"The most popular of the five benefit options, the Emerald plan, covers more than 70% of all members while the Sapphire option, the third largest option, covers more than 32 000 beneficiaries with an average family size of 3.48 and an average beneficiary age of 27 years.
"The average 'Gems family size' is significantly higher than the industry average. We believe this to be indicative of the efficacy of the new subsidy, where employees receive a greater subsidy when more of their family members are covered," said Watson.
"More than 91 000 employees on salary levels one to five have registered on Gems to date."
He said work was under way to ensure that the 190 000 employees who were not covered took up membership.
Watson said the scheme was in good financial stead. "The business model is designed to accommodate rapid growth. For example, in 2007 Gems collected more than R2.5bn in contributions, paid R11m claim lines and despite still not applying underwriting, recorded a surplus of more than R130m."
He said accumulated funds increased from R81m in 2006 to R214m in 2007.
- City Press