Durban - Justice Minister Ronald Lamola has ordered an investigation into the MojaPay system glitch that led to the non-payment and duplications of maintenance payments to beneficiaries in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.
The department’s financial management system is used to facilitate payments such as court-ordered maintenance by divorced or unmarried fathers of children.
The system failure on May 4 affected 622 maintenance beneficiaries at the end of June, 47 of whom were from KZN.
The ministry said the MojaPay system had been fully functional since May 28.
Lamola said the migration from the old Justice Department of Accounting System (JDAS) to the new MojaPay system was part of their endeavour to prevent possible duplicate payments and potential risks to the department’s financial accountability.
In his budget vote speech in Parliament last week, Lamola said he had enlisted the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research to conduct a forensic investigation to establish what caused failures in the system.
“If it is found that there was a human intervention in the failure, rest assured that implicated individuals will not be spared accountability.”
In a statement issued this week, Lamola said he had directed the acting director-general to investigate the matter further. The closure of JDAS on March 31 interrupted the processing of payments for some courts that had not been able to migrate their beneficiary database before the closure date, said Lamola.
He added that the old system was closed in the Eastern Cape and in KZN, despite the fact that not all courts in these provinces had been successfully migrated to the MojaPay system.
“Nonetheless, the decision to close the old system has severely affected the livelihoods of many maintenance beneficiaries and has caused untold anxiety in many homes. Many households rely heavily on maintenance benefits in order to survive,” said Lamola.
Childline KZN acting director Adeshini Naicker said while it was common knowledge that hunger and malnutrition had increased dramatically during the Covid-19 lockdown, it was even sadder that this system did not deliver timeously.
“The economic situation has been exacerbated by the lockdown, with many single mothers being retrenched or unable to work during the lockdown period,” she said.
Naicker said maintenance was mandatory to provide minors with their basic needs, and this was governed by our Constitution.
“Any change in the system of payment should have been tried and tested before being implemented. Implementation should have been withheld until authorities were sure that no child would starve due to a glitch in the system,” said Naicker.
The Mercury