‘ECDs to receive relief payments soon’, says DSD

The Department of Social Development (DSD) has vowed to make payments to all Early Childhood Development (ECD) services that applied and meet the criteria for the Employment Stimulus Relief Fund (ESRF) prior the closing date soon.

This is after it the DA had flagged earlier this week that there were delays in payment of NGO’s in Gauteng.

DA Gauteng shadow MEC for social development Refiloe Nt’sekhe said she had received numerous phone calls and messages from NGOs across the province complaining they have not received their first tranche of subsidy payments from the department.

ALSO READ: DA outraged at delays in payment of NGOs subsidies

In a statement on Wednesday, the Department of Social Development (DSD) said the payments will be received in the next few weeks.

The department has since acknowledged that the process for payments of outstanding applicants was taking longer than expected. It said that all processes needed to be followed accordingly.

It said that it has since engaged with all provincial treasures for rollovers and that payment processes were underway.

The department also refuted claims that all ECD centres had not been paid at all, and that it was ignoring calls from applicants and making no communication.

“The Department of Social Development issued a media statement on the ECD stimulus package on 16 April 2021 to provide an update on the status of applications for the ECD ESRF. Guidance and communication with all affected applications was done on multiple occasions and adequate time was provided for applications to be corrected and the system was left open from 1 March 2021 until 7 May 2021 for this purpose. ” reads the statement.

ALSO READ: DA wants ECD centres in Emfuleni to be urgently attended to

“In this regard, the department indicated that a major challenge in processing outstanding applications was, inter alia, due to a number of errors wherein applicants either incorrectly captured the identity numbers of their staff that they had applied for or, provided incorrect banking information.”

The department said that it was also experiencing challenges with data capturing as some applications had incorrect information that had not been updated by the ECD services.

“The unfortunate part was that we were at the end of the financial year which made it difficult to continue paying after March 2021, until all necessary National Treasury processes are concluded, and this is stage we are at currently.”

The department said it that it will continue to work with all stakeholders to support the implementation of the ECD ESRF.