H’lands tops accidents

 STATISTICS from Motor Vehicle Insurance Limited show that the Highlands region had the highest number of reported road accidents in the last decade. 

Chief executive officer Joe Wemin said statistics of road accidents around the country showed that Highlands region reported 4056 accidents – the highest among the four regions. 

“This is followed by the Southern with the second highest of 2182, and Momase with 1595 and the New Guinea Islands (NGI) with about 573 road accidents reported,” he said.

“And that leads to a total of 8267 accidents reported throughout the country over the last 10 years.”

Wemin said the total number of claims lodged from these accidents was 29025. Of these claims, the Highlands region sent in the highest number (16246), Southern submitted 6104, Momase 5512 and the NGI 1525.

“And the total costs of these claims was about K180 million, which include K104 million from Highlands, K36 million from Southern, K30 million from Momase and K8 million from the NGI,” he said.

“So for MVIL as a state-owned enterprise, it’s a burden to the state that we are addressing head on because we are suspicious of fraudulent claims involved.”

Wemin said MVIL was taking proactive measures to address fraud and illegal claims to save costs and bring to justice perpetrators. “We are partnering with all the key stakeholders in the claims process including the police, doctors and vehicle owners,” he said.

“If we are entertaining those false claims and serve them payments, then we are depriving our people of the funds that are supposed to be paid in dividends to the Government to deliver services to them. 

“We want to save enough money to serve our Government to deliver services to the people.”

Meanwhile, Senior Sergeant Gabriel Kake,  officer in-charge of accidents records in the National Capital District, said there were some defective and fraudulent police reports on accidents. 

“There are so many reports coming in, some are done properly and some are not done properly, some accident claims are genuine whilst others are not genuine without accidents,” Kake said. 

“Starting late October last year, we started to take note of reports themselves and we came up to defective ones or fraudulent ones and we met with some of the officers last November and referred them for investigation.”