Gauteng Care Crisis Committee wants Social Development to explain what happened to NPO funding
The organisation want to compel the department to reveal who they are funding and what criteria is used to determine who gets money assistance.
JOHANNESBURG - The Gauteng Care Crisis Committee representing non-profit organisations in the province wants the Social Development Department to explain what happened to NPO funding.
The organisation want to compel the department to reveal who they are funding and what criteria is used to determine who gets money assistance.
The Gauteng Crisis Committee took Premier Panyaza Lesufi and the Social Development Department to Court after NPOs in the province did not receive money in the 2024/ 25 fiscal.
READ: Lesufi steps in to resolve funding crisis at Gauteng social development department
Last year Premier Panyaza Lesufi announced that the budget for the 2024/2025 year would be cut from R2.4 to R1.8 billion.
This is while the department had received almost double the applications from the previous year.
With less funding and more applications, the committee says the department struggled to get things right.
Committee chairperson Lisa Vetten said this is why the department promised to pay more organisations than it could afford.
"There remains this question that they appeared to accept some 300 organisations, some of them they only gave verbal approval to but some they certainly gave contracts to. They have only approved 101 of those 300."
She said they are yet to find out how much the government has spent on those applications it approved.