R1bn recouped from 'ghost grants'

File picture: Siphiwe Sibeko

File picture: Siphiwe Sibeko

Published Oct 26, 2016

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Cape Town - The Department of Social Development has recouped more than R1 billion from unspent social and disability grants as a result of its corruption-fighting mechanism to uncover fraudulent grants and also due to a revised process of assessing disabilities.

This was revealed in National Treasury's 2016 Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) which was tabled by Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan, in Parliament on Wednesday. Treasury said a number of children were taken off the social grants system in June this year following investigations that were prompted by the Auditor-General to probe “ghost” grants.

As a result, Treasury said the uptake of the child support grant had declined by more than anticipated. The number of child support grant beneficiaries was not expected to reach 12.3 million by the end of 2016/17 period. “R1.005 billion in unspent funds has been declared from social grants as a result of slow spending on the child support grant and the disability grant,” Treasury said.

“This is mainly due to a number of children being taken off the system as a result of investigations following queries from the auditor general, leading to a lower than anticipated number of beneficiaries for the child support grant. The slow spending on the disability grant is mainly due to improved efficiency in the assessment of disabilities.” By the end of September, 16.9 million beneficiaries were receiving various social grants. The child support grant stands at R350 per month, while a disability grant is R1500 per month. These grants take R52 billion and R20.4 billion respectively from the R167.5 billion allocated for 2016/17 social development budget.

Offsetting effects of inflation

Treasury said government had decided to also increase the child support grant by R10 to R360 as from this month to offset the effects of high food inflation recorded earlier this year. It was announced in the 2016 Budget Speech that the old-age, disability and care dependency grants would each increase by R10 in October. Meanwhile, Treasury said Cabinet had approved in principle an extended child support grant, which could be implemented in 2018/19, for orphans who had lost both parents but were in the care of extended family members.

Treasury also announced a new conditional grant to provinces with effect from 2017/18 in a bid to support the employment of social worker graduates from the national scholarship programme. A second conditional grant would expand early childhood development services and the maintenance of related infrastructure.

Treasury said it was working with the department of social development on a strategy to guide future financing for early childhood development.

African News Agency (ANA)

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