My sister in law works for DuPont De Nemours South Africa.
In March she had to attend BMW Advanced Drivers Training Defensive Driving and Skid Pan Collision Avoidance and Control. As per the DuPont Safety and Driving policies employees are obliged to attend these courses every 2 years.
The next morning when she woke up she could not move, on admittance to hospital casualty, she was sent for x-rays and then MRI’s.
It was diagnosed that her vertebrae had prolapsed closing her spinal column.
She was in traction in hospital for a week then physiotherapy.
She had no improvement and her Neuro Surgeon then admitted her for surgery.
She had cages implanted in her vertebrae. Complications of this surgery is complete paralysis.
Before surgery DuPont filled in all the documents for Workmens Compensation and Injury Insurance policies, my sister in laws Doctors all filled in the required medical reports for this Injury on Duty and submitted them to DuPont as per their request.
My sister in law and her husband paid all the medical expenses from their personal medical aid and incomes. Her husband had a meeting with DuPont before her surgery, handing in receipts for medical bills which he was told would be re-imbursed to them. He was also told he and his wife was part of the DuPont family and DuPont look after family.
When my sister in law came out of surgery her medical insurance was finished and she could not have further medication and physiotherapy. She continually asked DuPont for assistance to pay her medical bills. For the majority of the time none of her emails or telephone calls were responded to by DuPont.
For 3 months DuPont did not assist with this or respond in any manner to my sister in laws requests.
Eventually meetings were started and she was assured DuPont would assist her and look into the matter. In meetings and telephone conversations either with herself or her husband DuPont continually apologised to them and said that DuPont do not treat staff members in this manner.
Her husband owns his own business and due to him having to look after her in various stages of her injury and after surgery he lost a substantial income. Between Medical bills and losing income eventually their children were asked to leave school as they could not afford their school fees.
Due to their extreme financial situation my sister in law asked DuPont to either assist her with medical bills or loan her a substantial amount of money to be able to have the necessary medical treatments from her spinal surgery, put the children back into school, feed her family, stay out of jail as creditors were now threatening arrest for non payment of bills and keep the lights and water back on. It was at the same time that my sister in law started asking to come back to work after successful surgery.
DuPont then said they needed her medical reports to determine her further employability.
This after an injury on duty?
After 4 months of asking for financial assistance and getting no where, of hearing empty promises and lip service apologies. My sister in law took the matter to higher management. It’s amazing how fast the response came in then. After 4 months of no legitimate response from DuPont, within 3 days of writing about her situation to Presidents of DuPont my sister in law actually had a response from DuPont South Africa.

She was served a letter by their attorneys:
1. She is no longer allowed to have any communication with DuPont staff on this matter only the attorneys.
2. DuPont now claim she was not injured on duty and they are investigating the matter. 7 months after the fact they are now investigating? They claim they do not believe she is entitled to Workmens Compensation. South African labour law dictates that Workmens Compensation claims be submitted within 30 days of the injury. If DuPont submitted these claims within the period, how can this claim now be under investigation as legally these claims should have already been finalised under South African law.
3. They claim she has exhausted her sick leave, sick leave cannot be allocated to an Injury on Duty.
4. They claim they have paid her, her full salary for 7 months despite her not having had an injury on duty.
5. They claim she may only use her laptop, blackberry and company car for work purposes until such time as she is deemed fit for work. Paradox.

DuPont claim to be a safety first company. Their core values are Respect for people, Health and Safety, Environment etc. None of these values have been applied to my sister in law or her family. I have seen them suffer through untold experiences because of this injury on duty and now it seems DuPont is pulling out all the guns to make this family suffer further because my sister in law dared to go to the highest level of management.Now DuPont are using their strong arm to try and intimidate and victimise my sister in law. DuPont is the worst company for anyone to work for especially in South Africa. I will tell everyone I meet about our families worst first hand experience of DuPont.
DuPont have treated my sister in law and her family like trash.