Gauteng Care Crisis Committee turns to court over funding payment delays

The Gauteng Care Crisis Committee will bring an urgent application against the province's department of social development in the Johannesburg high court on Wednesday over the crisis caused by funding delays. 

The application seeks to bring transparency and clarity to the department’s processes and decisions on who to fund and for how much.

The committee, representing 62 organisations in different sectors, said it would ask the court to issue an order directing the department to enter into service level agreements with all nonprofit organisations (NPOs) approved for funding and to pay the first tranche to the NPOs by Friday next week.

It will further ask that the department provide a report by May 31 on all funding applications received.

It wants this to be done with the listing of: “All organisations who were funded and the amount of funding each organisation received and all organisations whose applications were refused and the reasons for the rejection.”

According to the committee, the report is important for holding the department to account for its decision-making procedures.

“We will be able to track cuts in funding — thus ensuring that funds are restored in line with the premier’s commitments of May 13 and 14, as well as start the process of reviewing decisions to defund organisations. The report will thus lay the basis for an orderly resolution to the crisis of the last while and promote much-needed transparency around the department’s decision-making,” said the committee.

TimesLIVE has reported that some NPOs retrenched staff and closed their doors due to delays in receiving funding while the social development department scrambled to finalise the signing of service level agreements (SLAs). In March the department's budget was slashed by R233m.

Further, the Gauteng government said premier Panyaza Lesufi had “reassured the sector of continued support from the province, announcing the suspension of the 70/30 clause on the SLAs, that the budget would be reinstated from R1.7bn to the original R2.4bn and prioritising immediate payment of NPOs”.

TimesLIVE