Help for accident victims: Challenge to GPRTU
Dr Freddie Salawu’s article on “Road traffic accident victims: Who should bear the cost of initial treatment?” published in the Daily Graphic on March 13, 2014 is commendable for highlighting a persistent and embarrassing problem faced by accident victims.
Advertisement
As a medical doctor (I hope so), he would have seen too many traumatised and disconsolate accident patients physically tortured by pain and sheer lack of money to pay for pressing medical attention. Dr Salawu went on to make proposals that could alleviate the problem, when adopted. They are good and deserve a dispassionate study with a view to adopting what is most workable.
As a lawyer, I have it as my duty to process insurance claims for accident victims, and, I must say, it has not been a pleasant work at all. Whereas insurance companies are quick to receive premiums from car owners, the companies drug their feet when it comes to the payment of claims to accident victims.
It is time-consuming and worse when it is without the intervention of lawyers. It takes a long time, most times beyond a year, before claims are paid to victims of accidents. Dr Salawu posed a question which I shall answer in this article. He asked: Who pays the initial cost of treatment?
I happened to be part of a team of thinkers who were grappling with what assistance accident victims could obtain in the immediacy of accidents until help arrived from somewhere. We came up with JEVIGA 1076 AGENCIES LTD, with one Aflonz Amoah, a Chartered Insurance Practitioner and Broker, as its founder and Chief Executive.
The overriding concern of JEVIGA is to reduce, to the barest minimum, the problems, frustrations and trauma of accident victims in making third party insurance claims. JEVIGA designed the Passengers’ Joint-Help Contributory Scheme which was perfected for take-off as far back as 2009. Under the scheme, road travellers within the country will make a mandatory contribution anytime they board a vehicle to travel from one part to the other.
If you travelled from Accra to Kumasi and back, you would have contributed twice. The contributions paid will be utilised to provide financial assistance, legal and administrative services to injured passengers of an accident. The scheme will, however, operate without prejudice to Road Traffic (Third Party) laws, the National Health Insurance Scheme and personal insurance policies of passengers.
The scheme
How will the scheme work? Firstly, passengers will be issued specially designed tickets showing all personal particulars to facilitate identification when an accident occurs. There will also be a passengers’ manifest which will contain the names of all persons on a vehicle for a particular journey.
Secondly in the event of an accident, the scheme will apply for and pay for police and medical reports with which to process insurance claims for those killed or injured in the accident. The services of the scheme will involve investigation, verification, documentation and payment of financial assistance to accident victims until their insurance claims are ready. In the cases of death, the next of kin will obtain the benefits.
Expenses borne by the scheme will be deducted from overall compensation paid to the accident victim.
Thirldly, beyond processing documents for insurance claims, the scheme will assist victims to pay their medical expenses up to a certain affordable amount. Payments will be made directly to the hospital. Also, during the period of recuperation, victims will be given money for their upkeep and transportation back home, on discharge. With the deceased, part of their mortuary fees will be paid directly to the hospital.
Finally, all the expenses and personal particulars of the injured and deceased shall be handled administratively from the office of JEVIGA.
Does Dr Salawu see how we have provided answers to his worries as far back as 2009?
Positive outcomes
What are the likely positive outcomes of the scheme to others, besides passengers? In the first instance, the scheme will offer employment to senior high and university graduates in the region of about 1000 for the nation.
Secondly, the state will obtain revenue from SSNIT contributions, income tax of employees, company tax and other levies incidental to the work.
Thirdly, the scheme will work in tandem with the transport operators to ensure better maintenance of vehicles; check whether drivers are licensed or not; devise a unique passenger identification tag and aid transport operators to improve on the management of their fleet of vehicles.
Fourthly, the scheme will contribute towards the provision of ambulance services on the highways to quicken the response time for victims.
Finally, fraudulent insurance claims will be eliminated, as passengers would have been manifested before the journey.
The challenges
It is apparent that given the wide terrain that will be covered in the work of the scheme, JEVIGA will have to collaborate with the MTTD, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Transport, insurance companies, commercial and rural banks, transport operators and other stakeholders in a synergistic way for the benefit of accident victims.
We anticipate that when the scheme takes off, the operational challenges that will certainly come will inure to the growth and refinement of procedures applied by these bodies to accident victims, users of the roads and transport owners in general.
Advertisement
Now, I shall answer a question. Why have I stated that help for accident victims constitutes a challenge to the GPRTU?
The answer is that when the CEO of JEVIGA set out to interest others in the idea of helping accident victims, as outlined in this article, the very first organisation he approached was the GPRTU. They listened to him out of courtesy but did not support him.
Their concern was that if “x” amount was added to the approved fares, passengers might complain and that was unacceptable to them. What the GPRTU failed to appreciate was valued by other stakeholders in the transport industry, namely PROTOA and transport cooperatives. In his interactions with them, all of them supported the idea as creative and needful but stated their reliance on the GPRTU to flash the green light for them to implement the scheme in unison.
At any rate, the CEO has provided much information to the public through his interviews on the GTV Breakfast Show, ETV, Radio Gold, Oman FM, Adom FM and others. What remains to be done is for the GPRTU to give the go ahead for this laudable scheme to see the light of day.
Advertisement
Dr Salawu has touched on a very critical area in our national life. We have the solution. It requires courageous leadership, not a shuffling and diffident one, to get the idea off the shelves and get it running. Will the GPRTU provide that leadership?
rigasgh@yahoo.com