Once again, early childhood development (ECD) practitioners in Ndlambe have struggled to keep local centres open as they waited months for crucial subsidies to be paid.
Talk of The Town reported earlier this year (July 28, 2022) on the delay in payments of subsidies to ECD centres in the Eastern Cape. This followed the switch in function from the Department of Social Development to the Department of Basic Education. This time, the Department of Basic Education says it is discrepancies in banking details submitted by some of the centres that led to the delay in the payments of subsidies across the province.
ECD centres in Ndlambe eventually received the subsidies meant to cover the first six months of the year in July. Meanwhile, practitioners had emptied their own grocery cupboards to feed the children in their care and had gone without being paid themselves.
Four months later, Ndlambe ECD centres and the people who work there are drowning in debt again, having used their personal resources to keep the doors open as they waited for the next subsidy tranche.
They have now received the subsidy to cover the second half of the year. The centres that get equitable share grants received their subsidies on December 2, while centres that get conditional grants received their subsidies a week later, on December 13.
Ndlambe ECD Forum chairperson, Phindiswa Mpati said it’s the children in their care who are most affected by these delays in payments.
“We depend on this subsidy to buy food for the children and to do administration,” Mpati said.
“We can’t even take children for outings now when the theme we are teaching them requires them to be taken out. For example, when we are teaching them about transport, we’re supposed to take them to see different kinds of transport, but we aren’t able to do so,” said Mpati.
Ndlambe ECDs have not been folding arms while waiting for their grants to be paid. They’ve organised various fundraising efforts to help keep the centres running such as jointly hosting concerts and pooling the money made from ticket sales. Those fundraising efforts are not enough to keep them away from debt, unfortunately. When things get really bad, staff go out and buy food on credit, hoping that the grant subsidies will be paid soon so they don’t keep piling up debt.
“We even go to the location shops and take food on credit so we can feed the children,” said Mpati.
Mpati said there seemed to be a communication problem between the district office and school principals. “All we get is empty promises. Sometimes they tell us they are waiting for the province, then tell us about the technical problems that the provincial office is having,” she said.
The subsidy payment, coming only in December, is months late. It has brought little relief because the centres are already drowning in debt. “It is not giving any relief because we’re already in too much debt. Perhaps if we received the subsidies monthly it would be better,” said Mpati.
“We so wish the department could be honest with us and do their work properly. We have lapsed [personal] policies.
“The security company contracts have been suspended in our centres because we don’t know when the money will be appearing in our banks account.”
Mpati shared the frustrations the centres are facing.
“We wish they could feel our pain. Some are single parents or widows. We are all bread winners and we only received the money on December 13. Some of the centres last got the grant in August so you can imagine how much debt we’re in when we receive these subsidies so late. It is very painful, but we are still waking up every morning and go to work five days a week from 7am to 3.45 pm,” she said.
Spokesperson for the Department of Basic Education in the Eastern Cape, Malibongwe Mtima said discrepancies in banking details submitted by some of the centres had led to the delay in the payments of subsidies in the province. He explained that when one school’s banking details has errors that need to be verified, it affects the entire group’s payment.
“We have been given a month by Treasury to pay each and every one of them. The month is meant to accommodate discrepancies that sometimes get picked up by the banks, namely closed accounts, accounts not matching the names they are registered under, signatures not matching etc. The batch then gets to be sent back to us to clean it up (verify all the information provided by the bank needing verification),” said Mtima.
Some of the documentation for Ndlambe ECDs had not been found on the Department of Education’s system.
“The documents [for some of the ECD centres] were not found in the system confirming submission either directly by the school or the district office,” Mtima said. “Such then will have to be verified, trace the paper trail, retrieve the documents and upload them in the system for payment.”
