Vulnerable children left in the cold without safe homes due to the department’s failure to pay NGOs subsidies
22 July 2021
Vulnerable children in Tshwane and surrounding areas are at risk of starvation due to delays of their placement to safe homes through adoptions as a result of the department’s failure to pay subsidies timeously to Christelike Maatskaplike Raad (CMR) in Tshwane.
CMR is among the list of NGOs in the social welfare sector that have not yet received their first tranche of the subsidy payment from the Gauteng Department of Social Development.
The CMR in Pretoria has three divisions that amongst others, provides food, clothing and shelter to destitute families. It also provides child protection services which include assessments and evaluations, protection of physically and mentally abused and neglected children, and also unites children with their families. The other division focuses on the adoptions and assessments processes.
This is just one of the many NGOs that fulfil such an important role in our fractured society, relying on every cent that they get from the department.
Failure by the Gauteng Department of Social Development to fulfil its mandate would see our vulnerable children being thrown under the bus with nowhere to go to find food and shelter.
The vulnerable children of Gauteng have been left out in the cold as the department delays the subsidy payment of several NGOs. This means these essential services for our orphaned, homeless, and victimised children and families cannot continue.
The DA has engaged with the affected NGO, and we will be writing to the Gauteng MEC for Social Development, Morakane Mosupyoe and the Head of Department (HOD) to ask for their intervention and to expedite the payments.
We will continue to put pressure on the MEC to speed up the process of making payments and ensure that this never happens again as many lives are dependent on that money for their day-to-day survival.
Issued by Bronwynn Engelbrecht, DA Gauteng Spokesperson for Social Development, 22 July 2021
