DSD need to pay old age, children’s homes urgently
13 August 2020
The Democratic Alliance (DA) is appalled by reports that the Department of Social Development (DSD) has failed to pay thousands of organisations that do social work on behalf of Government in several provinces in South Africa, and call on the Minister of Social Development, Lindiwe Zulu, to ensure that the situation is rectified immediately.
We will also submit parliamentary questions to interrogate the root cause of this travesty.
These organisations service the most vulnerable member of our society, including old age homes, children’s homes and women’s shelters, and it is simply deplorable that they would not have been paid since March 2020.
According to a report by Lisa Vetten of the Care Work Campaign, and Margaret Grobbelaar of the National Coalition of Social Services, hundreds of such organisations in the Eastern Cape and North West have not received any payment the past four months, and many in North West, Limpopo and Mpumalanga had their budgets slashed with up to 25%. To add insult to injury, these organisations are expected to use 15% of their operational budgets for the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE).