Durban - Maintenance defaulters, be warned: you could soon find find your tax refunds slashed, as the Department of Justice explores new ways to clamp down on those who shirk their maintenance responsibilities and wants to recruit the help of Sars.
Advocate Mulalo Netshisaulu, of the department’s Promotion of the Rights of Vulnerable Groups unit, said on Wednesday that they were investigating the possibility of drawing up a memorandum of understanding with Sars.
“So if they (defaulters) are receiving funds from Sars, we can take a portion to cover the maintenance of the children.”
Netshisaulu was speaking at the department’s launch in Durban of the national maintenance enforcement strategy. It’s aim is to “reduce and ultimately eliminate maintenance default from all our court rolls”.
It discusses plans to explore setting up a similar memorandum of understanding with the Department of Labour, in respect of pension funds and the funds that defaulters receive after they resign.
In addition, studies are in the pipeline to assess the viability of amending the maintenance act to provide financial assistance to complainants in maintenance disputes and of obtaining clearance certificates for emigrants.
The latter could mean parents who were trying to skip the country without settling their maintenance obligations would be refused the necessary documents until they paid up, Netshisaulu said.
The department, along with the National Prosecuting Authority, which co-hosted on Wednesday’s launch, has the issue of maintenance default on its radar.
The department revealed on Wednesday that it dealt with more than 160 000 new maintenance applications in 2015/16
It is in KwaZulu-Natal that the largest percentage of the country’s children live and where recent statistics showed that almost 2 million children - 43.8% of all the province’s children - live with just their mothers.
Steven Pretorius, the founder and chairman of Fathers-4-Justice South Africa, said they supported any move to encourage maintenance payments. “We are firmly of the view that parents must pay their fare share and must honour their commitments,” he said, “We tell our fathers to pay their dues.”
Speaking on the passing of a new law last year which allowed maintenance defaulters to be blacklisted, Pretorius said they had also supported that move.
He pointed out, however, that on the flip side was the issue of access to children.
A parent who was not receiving maintenance would often deny the other parent access to the child, he said, and this was to the detriment of the child.
“At the end of the day, our priority is the children,” he said.
The director of Families South Africa in Durban, Zama Mabaso, said the types of measures in discussion could have a positive impact on the problem of maintenance default if they were implemented.
“I think it would be good,” she said.
“People are abdicating their responsibilities, and if they could access that money, it would be worth thinking about.”
The Mercury