Fury as R121m lifeline to needy goes unspent
Social development blames expired contract with service provider meant to verify NGOS
At least R121m allocated to NGOS across the Eastern Cape was not spent by the social development department because the contract with the service provider meant to verify the organisations had lapsed.
This was revealed by the provincial treasury in response to written questions submitted by DA MPL Yusuf Cassim, who had asked about under-expenditure by the provincial government.
The treasury’s answers, dated October 7, explain that the contractor had been carrying out “verification of eligible NGOS”, meaning the department had not known who to give the money to after the contract expired.
Social development MEC Bukiwe Fanta has reacted by issuing stern warnings to her managers who failed to spend money allocated to improve people’s lives.
In a statement on Sunday, issued by department spokesperson Busisiwe Jemsana-mantashe, Fanta said: “The MEC has made it clear that she will not tolerate any underexpenditure under her watch and has requested monthly expenditure updates and projections which will see any unspent money being redirected to areas of most need.”
Mantashe said the unspent R121m represented 4% of the budget and that the rest of it, R3.3bn, was spent.
She also blamed “tight turnaround times and cut-off dates, delays in the submission of invoices and inadequate capacity challenges for the service provider to provide the required services” and tight “supply chain deadlines”.
“The MEC has instructed management that as we plan for the next financial year, more effort must be put in enhancing programmes that create a conducive environment for communities to self-sustain.
“We are also intensifying the fight against gender-based violence and femicide through awareness campaigns and programmes.”
Globally recognised international women’s rights activist, Dr Lesley Ann Foster said NGOS and activists knew from experience how the department lacked capacity and competence, had underfunded efforts to counter the ravages of gender-based violence (GBV), was trapped in a bureaucratic mire of “pen pushers”, and was not reaching nearly far enough into the province’s social welfare crisis.
Foster, who is the East London-based director of Masimanyane Women’s Rights International, spoke of a lack of internal co-ordination in the department on how to spend allocated funds.
Though some in the department had “big hearts” and the passion and commitment to change people’s lives, they were up against a concerted “lack of political will”.
Retiree Trevor Willard, 62, who feeds, clothes, counsels and shelters 30 abused and traumatised men in East London, said that since registering the NPO Open Hands nearly three years ago, it had received “not a cent” from the department.
Willard, one of 12 winners of the 2022 Daily Dispatch and Johnson & Johnson Local Heroes awards, said: “Since opening Open Hands in January 2019, we have approached the department and tried to get funding, assistance, even just to talk to them to get ideas.”
He said the department was “quick to shout the odds” while offering no assistance.
“There is a huge demand to assist abused and traumatised men in the Eastern Cape.
“In East London there have been men who could not take the pressure who have shot themselves.
“Even if we got a million, it would be a huge help. If we had the bedding and space we could enlarge our house in Jarvis Road and have space for 50 men.”
The DA’S provincial social development spokesperson, Kobus Botha, laid into the department, saying it left money unspent “while families starve” at a time when unemployment, food prices and poverty were soaring.
He said the money could also have been spent on shelters for victims of gender violence, but instead funding for organisations supporting and sheltering victims and survivors had shrunk to a “mere R7.1m” out of the department’s R3.3bn annual budget. His party had called for “needs assessments in the various districts in the province where no shelters are available”.