NPOs face huge budget cuts
Services could collapse in KZN
NPOs have been holding urgent meetings over proposed subsidy cuts by the Department of Social Development, which could see services collapsing across the province.
Chairwoman of the KZN directors network for NPOs, Zama Mabaso - also head of the Family and Marriage Society of SA (Famsa) in the province - said this week that while the department had not confirmed the cuts in writing, there had been “information sharing” meetings with organisations.
“At the time of our media conference last week, five organisations had had meetings with the department. Organisations are being called daily.”
It is believed the department has called as many as 12 organisations.
Famsa had been called to a meeting at the beginning of July by fax.
“A senior official at the department, said it was an information sharing meeting. He informed the organisation that six posts, uMlazi, Umbumbulu, Inanda, KwaMashu, Chatsworth and Mpumalanga faced cuts by the end of September.
“When questioned, he said he was taking orders from his head of department and tried to show us the signed document about the cuts.
“In his words, he said he had a R900 000 budget which had been cut to R400 000. He said the budget cut was set,” said Mabaso.
She added she had been trying to have the proposed budget cuts put in writing by the department since the meeting, but to no avail.
Two other organisations, Tafta and Age In Action have both received minutes from their meetings which indicated subsidy cuts were being planned.
The minutes, which have been seen by The Independent on Saturday, have a departmental heading and the purpose of the meeting is stated as “to discuss the funding allocation for 2016/2017.
“The budgets allocated to the districts have been very limited and thus reductions in subsidies had to be made. This is a result of greater economic pressures on the country as a whole. Thus the way funding had been allocated had to be reviewed”.
Mabaso said that according to “well researched information, the NPOs were rendering 73 percent of the (social) services in this country. The impact of this will be huge and we are doing an impact analysis.”
While there have been allegations made in the past that services are being duplicated within the social services sector, Mabaso said it was “strongly believed this was not accurate.
“Facilities are owned by NPOs while very few facilities are owned by (the department) in the province, which is why they are purchasing services.”
She added that specialised services had been established over years with the relevant expertise, “and this is a fact they can’t dispute”, she said.
Describing NPO budgets as strained because of “resources that are drying up due to the economic situation and poor funding from the government who calls us their partner”, Mabaso said she felt the “the matter at hand could have been handled in a much more professional way”, especially if the NPO Forum, resuscitated by the department in 2014, had not become “dysfunctional due to their not keeping to meeting dates.”
Last week’s media briefing, called by the NPOs at Malvern Child Welfare in Durban, saw the room packed with representatives who said the department had not been consistent in meetings with different organisations. They also said the impact would be most felt in the poorest communities.
At the meeting it was confirmed there were more than 200 NPOs in the province and research into just 39 organisations indicated that the planned subsidy cuts would affect more than 525 000 people, of which 63 percent lived in rural communities.
“Can you imagine if we calculated the impact on beneficiaries with all 200 NPOs?” asked Lalita Harie, executive director of Durban and Coastal Mental Health at the meeting.