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The Democratic Alliance (DA) staged a walkout of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature’s Social Development Portfolio Committee meeting today, in solidarity with NGOs that have not yet been paid their grants.

There have been delays in paying the NGOs subsidy grants for first quarter by the Gauteng Department of Social Development.

The Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between the NGOs and the department for the first quarter have not been signed. In 2017 the social workers strike was used as an excuse for not signing the SLAs and this does not apply this year.

Delays in the payment of grant subsidies by the department have had a significant impact on the operations of NGOs as they solely depend on these grants for their sustainability.

Some NGOs have been forced to close doors like the Greater Benoni Child Welfare, while others do not have food to feed the beneficiaries and money to pay salaries.

NGOs provide a critical service to the most vulnerable members of our society and we will not tolerate the department’s incompetence in paying them timeously as this affects their lives.

The DA MPLs have vowed to continue staging walkouts at the Social Development Portfolio Committee meetings until all the NGOs in Gauteng are paid their subsidy grant for the first quarter.

We will continue to put pressure on the department to ensure that it fulfills its mandate to pay grant subsidies timeously to all NGOs who qualify. The responsibility to ensure that NGOs/NPOs are compliant rests with the capacitation unit of the department.

Issued by DA