Acclaim Southland
PO Box 6166
Invercargill

26 March 2009
Media Statement
ACC Shifts Hard Cases to Hard Branch

Southlanders suffering from the long-term effects of their injuries are alarmed at reports that 200 of their files are being shifted from ACC’s Invercargill office to Alexandra, an office notorious for its ruthlessness and cruelty, according to Acclaim Southland spokesperson Tony Green.

Acclaim Southland is the local branch of a nation-wide ACC victim-support group that tries to assist victims of ACC’s bullying and persecution. The branch currently has over 50 financial members.

“We are aware that ACC staff are paid according to their ability to reach certain Key Performance Indicators”, said Mr Green. “We also know that the KPIs are heavily weighted towards removing people’s ACC entitlements, especially weekly compensation, which is paid to those who cannot return to their pre-injury job fulltime because of their injuries.”

“Recent debates and questions in Parliament have revealed that ACC is not removing enough injured people from its books at the critical three or 12 month periods on which the accountants fixate when performing their financial analyses of the scheme”, said Mr Green.

“Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, people with long term injury effects need help, including retraining, to get back into the workforce”, said Mr Green. “In ordinary language, these forms of help are known as rehabilitation, to which the law says injured people are supposed to be provided maximum practicable extent . However, in ACC’s parallel universe, “rehabilitation” means endless assessments by ACC’s favourite doctors until one of them tells it what it wants to hear so that it can stop entitlements.”

“It appears to us that the new government has instructed ACC to resume ruthlessly cutting its long term, or “tail”, claims”, said Mr Green, “while the Invercargill branch, to its credit, has adopted a slightly more humane attitude towards its task. As a result, we have heard credible reports that 200 files of long-term claimants have been, or will be, shifted to ACC’s Alexandra branch, which is known to us to contain some of the most ruthless, heartless staff in the Corporation, and that those staff will be remunerated for stopping entitlements.”

“Some of our members have had dealings with ACC’s Alexandra branch before”, said Mr Green, “and all of them found dealing with it to be deeply unpleasant and distressing.”

“Why won’t the government accept that not all injuries heal within a couple of months and that some of us need help from empathetic officials rather than the medical police force that ACC Alexandra branch represents?”, said Mr Green.

ends

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