The 2020/21 financial year will be known as the year of the declaration of a state of national disaster by the president on March 22 2020. It will also be known as the year that the Gauteng department of social development underspent its budget by over R438m.
The level 5 of the national hard lockdown precipitated a shock to the economy and further heightened the impact of the many social ills affecting our communities. The pandemic caused the sudden loss of income for many families and individuals, deepening poverty and unemployment, and resulting in increasing reports of domestic violence, hunger and social injustice.
Our people turned to the government for assistance, particularly the Gauteng department of social development, which has a core mandate to provide social protection services through which vulnerable individual groups and communities can become capable and self-reliant participants in their own development. Despite this clear mandate to break the cycle of poverty, the department just increased the dependency of people on government, through increased access to food by means of food banks and food parcels.
One of the biggest tragedies of the department’s annual report for the 2020/21 financial year is its underexpenditure by over R400m and its dismal performance of 59%. Breaking down the above results further, it is clear that the department is not fulfilling its mandate or even trying to be caring towards the vulnerable residents of Gauteng.
There are three areas of great concern: one is the lack of the provision of shelters for the homeless, the other is the lack of providing cornerstone education for our future generations, and finally, the late payments to the non-profit organisations. In these critical aspects, the department has failed miserably in spite of huge budgets.
In terms of the children and families programme, there was only the achievement of 30%, where one of the main issues is homeless shelters, which is a huge shortage in all municipalities. In addition, Treasury provided R88m for shelters, and we have no idea what happened to this money.
According to the department, municipalities were requested to submit business plans for shelters. Yet the City of Tshwane was never informed of any such request and all requests for financial assistance for shelters were rejected. We demand to know what happened to that R88m.
To add insult to injury, the department has initiated a rationalisation process where they intend to reduce the number of shelters in the province from 42 to 24.
This would be a huge tragedy for all those many hundreds of people who are living on dangerous streets having nowhere else to go, and finding the streets the only place where they can live.
In the area where our future lies in terms of the early childhood development programme, again we find a performance of only 27%. Conveniently, Covid-19 has been used as an excuse for why the department was unable to perform. While we agree there were times when there was a severe lockdown, a financial year, however, consists of 12 months, and during this period the officials were paid a salary, so this would have been the ideal opportunity to assist Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres to register and help with maintenance. During this period, more than 500 ECD centres were not registered.
This is a huge problem, especially in informal settlements where these centres are denied funding because they are not compliant with municipal by-laws. This is where the department should be playing a much bigger role in assisting ECDs to be compliant. The department should be playing a pivotal role in levelling the playing field as the environment in informal settlements cannot be compared to townships, yet the criteria for opening an ECD are the same.
There is also a huge issue of late payments to NGOs, which is severely affecting the rendering of social welfare services to the most vulnerable people of this province. Clearly, department officials do not understand or appreciate the sacrifices made by the NGO sector where private funding has to a large degree, dried up during the pandemic.
This department owes the people of Gauteng an apology for its lack of compassion in fulfilling its mandate. It has shown that it has no desire to break the cycle of poverty or change the future of our most deserving people.
• Engelbrecht is DA Gauteng spokesperson for social development
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