Cupboards bare at children’s homes
Delayed payment of government funds puts Bay care centres in precarious position
Fridges are almost empty, cars are out of fuel, and without their allotted government funding children’s homes across Nelson Mandela Bay have been forced to go hat in hand to private donors to try to keep their doors open.
The situation has become so dire that some facilities are operating week by week as their quarterly funding from the department of social development, meant to have been paid on April 1, is more than seven weeks late.
Though private donations have brought some relief and enabled them to feed the children, keep the lights on and transport them to school, they have not been able to pay the staff.
The department has blamed the delays on load-shedding, saying the power cuts did not leave officials with enough time to load the required documents and funding approvals onto its computer system.
It has promised that the money will be paid this week.
The severity of the predicament facing the children’s homes was brought to the fore by the MTR Smit Children’s Haven in Springfield, which posted a message on Facebook at the weekend saying that it only had food left until Monday.
It would also run out of diesel in the week and would be unable to pay staff salaries.
This meant the 78 children in its care would not have food or transport to attend school, and there would be no-one at the facility to look after them.
MTR Smit director Tanya Eales said that, fortunately, donations from the public came in thick and fast and the home now had enough food for the rest of the week.
“We have been humbled by the response from the public,” she said.
“Despite everyone being in financial distress, people have once again opened their hearts and helped us with the basics we need to keep food on the table.”
Eales said late payments from the department had become the norm.
In the past, the home had cash reserves to sustain it while waiting for the government to transfer the funds.
However, with the payments being delayed for so long, it had since used up its reserves.
“It is incredibly frustrating to be in this position. We have a budget, but we can’t implement it without the funding.
“Now our reserves, meant for emergencies and shortfalls, are depleted.
“And we don’t want our private donors to get the wrong impression and think we don’t know how to work with money,” she said.
On Kragga Kamma Road, the Khayalethu Child and Youth Care Centre, which looks after 30 children and youths, is facing a similar struggle, according to centre head Dr Marietjie van der Merwe.
“After the Easter weekend, we only had food left for a week. We had to contact our private donors for assistance.
“Some of them promised us funding for maintenance and other projects, but we had to ask them to buy food instead,” she said.
Until recently, the amount received from the department per child a month was R4,000.
This would be increased to R4,120 when the current payment was eventually made, the facilities said.
But Van der Merwe said the amount barely covered the food and electricity bills, as it cost nearly R300,000 a month
to operate the centre and the shortfall was covered by private donations.
“We have projects in the pipeline meant to generate income for us, but we cannot perform any maintenance or upgrades to our facilities.
“The money allocated for parts to fix our minibus now has to buy food, and that is just one example,” she said.
Similarly, were it not for some cash reserves thanks to private donations, the Oosterland Child and Youth Care Centre in Despatch would also be in a bleak situation.
“Unfortunately, this is not the first time we’ve been here as funding always comes late,” director Chantelle Jonker said.
Oosterland cares for 97 children across various age groups, and though Jonker preferred not to disclose its total monthly expenses, she said its food budget alone was just shy of R70,000 a month.
“We are lucky to have our reserves available, but this money is meant for emergencies and to supplement our monthly budget, not for keeping the ship afloat.
“We can’t keep dipping into these funds to pay all our expenses, because it won’t last forever if things keep going like this,” Jonker said.
Social development department spokesperson Busisiwe Jemsana-Mantashe apologised for the delays, saying officials had been unable to complete the payment process due to load-shedding.
“Capturing all the data to make the payments is done online, so we have been struggling to finalise the process because we are continuously disturbed by load-shedding.
“Sometimes we experience load-shedding twice a day, for two hours at a time, which further interrupts our work.”
However, Jemsana-Mantashe said the capturing process had been finalised and payments were scheduled to take place tomorrow, with the funds reflecting in the children’s home accounts by Sunday or Monday.
“Unfortunately, it was beyond our control,” she said.
She said the department encouraged children’s homes to find alternative means of funding as the government funds were meant only to supplement their independent income.
“They should be able to operate with or without government funding,” JemsanaMantashe said.