17 million hold their breath
SOCIAL Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini has defended her decision not to attend Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) meeting yesterday.
This as 17 million beneficiaries hold their breath they will receive their grants on April 1, and that it does not turn out to be a cruel April Fool’s joke.
Dlamini said she had attended a Scopa meeting last year, and saw no reason to discuss the social grants issue with it again this year.
She said she had appeared before the portfolio committee on social development, and that was where she should report.
Yesterday, Dlamini was expected to appear before Scopa to discuss the issue of the grants, but she did not show.
“I attended last year. We had to report on our programme of action, but the whole thing turned into grants. I don’t know how we ended up there,” said Dlamini.
“Last week, we went to the portfolio committee on social development, and that is a place we feel we have to account.”
Scopa chairperson Themba Godi said representatives were disappointed at Dlamini’s non-arrival.
He said they would arrange another date for the meeting with the minister.
Opposition parties have been calling for serious intervention by the government on the grants, saying 17 million beneficiaries face not being paid in April.
However, Dlamini said yesterday her department would clarify all the issues around the grants at a media briefing today.
Dlamini has insisted in the past that grants would be paid at the beginning of next month.
The Department of Social Development distributes more than R100 billion worth of grants to millions of people a year.
Scopa said it wants to clarify the issue of the grants with the minister as soon as possible.
This matter has been in the public domain over the past few weeks with concerns from parties in Parliament that the deadline for the Constitutional Court was looming.
Earlier Sassa told Scopa that negotiations to enter into a new contract with Cash Paymaster Services to distribute welfare grants will begin on Wednesday.
Sassa’s project manager Zodwa Mvulane said the controversial approach to CPS would entail a new contract, not an extension of the existing contract, which could only be done with the permission of the Constitutional Court, which had declared it invalid a number of years ago.
Mvulane confirmed that Sassa would not to go to the court to seek approval for an extension of the contract.
It would, however, still approach the court to file a “supplementary report” detailing Sassa’s difficulty in taking over grant payments itself beyond March 31, when the court’s indulgence in letting the CPS contract run so as not to compromise grant beneficiaries, ends.
Director-general of the Department of Social Development Zane Dangor said he expected the negotiations with CPS to conclude by Friday.
Dangor said the negotiations would be led by Mvulwani, in the absence of chief executive Thokozani Magwaza who is on sick leave at present.
He said he had invited the National Treasury to send a member of staff to the talks with CPS.
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s department has been thrust into a pivotal role in the grant payment debacle as the last-minute negotiations Sassa is planning will involve only one bidder.
This is against public finance management rules, and Dangor said the National Treasury would be asked to make a special exception for Sassa given the urgency of the situation.
“You are allowed to deviate for one bidder, but it can only be done with the permission of the National Treasury.”
Godi said Sassa had had years to prepare itself to take over the grant payment function but had failed to do so, and it was clear that the emergency was self-made.
‘I attended last year. We had to report on our programme of action’