The Accident Compensation Commission of Fiji (ACCF) has to date paid out about $82million for motor vehicle, employment and school accidents.
While making a public submission to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Economic Affairs, commission manager Anjeet Charan said they had processed about 3800 applications so far.
He highlighted some of the changes the commission proposes to include in the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill 2025.
“In terms of the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill 2025, we will bring some changes such as removing the meaning of ‘accident’ in the Act,” Mr Charan said.
“Accident was a general term, however, we would like to remove the broad term and add motor vehicle accidents, so that it specifically looks after motor vehicle accidents.
“And section 22 (2) in the current Act was that the decision of the commission is final and not subject to any appeal or review in any court or tribunal, however, now with the new provision, we’ll allow the applicants to appeal the decision if there’s any issue.”
He said all employment-related regulations would be moved to the Ministry of Employment’s Work Care Bill.
“The rest of the sections that were present under the ACCF Act and regulations were related to employment and school, however, these will all be moving to the Work Care Bill and hence will be repealed from the Act of ACCF. In terms of the current files, there is a transitional clause which will allow ACCF to approve and Ministry of Employment to compensate the files.”
Mr Charan said the commission was focused more on motor vehicle accident applications and road safety awareness.
“Once the transformation has been done, we’ll focus more on motor vehicle accident applications and the timelines in terms of processing.
“Also, we’ll try to focus more on road safety awareness in collaboration with LTA and Fiji Police to reduce accidents.”
