Successful NPOs soon to be contacted on funding
The department thanked the NPOs for their patience during the adjudication period, which took place amid a strained climate of investigations.
The Gauteng Department of Social Development (GDSD) said it has embarked on a rigorous NPO adjudication process, paving the way for reviewing and signing service level agreements (SLAs) with complying and successful NPOs for the 2024/25 financial year.
According to the GDSD, the successful NPOs are being contacted in the first week of April to come to the head office to sign the SLAs.
The NPOs will be contacted in groupings to ensure efficiency in dealing with the many arrivals.
According to Themba Gadebe, the spokesperson for the MEC of the GDSD, they received over 1 732 applications, collectively tallying to over R11.4b in financial requests, an amount far higher than the GDSD’s overall budget of R5.5b.
“Panellists had a gruelling task to stretch the budget far and wide in response to the needs presented by NPOs while realistically remaining within the confines of the budget available as it is impractical to fund the entire R11.4b.
“The process to invite eligible NPOs to sign the SLAs is underway and was centralised to the DSD headquarters to be co-ordinated by the accounting officer.
Gadebe said that previously the process was decentralised to officials in regional offices, but this was a contravention of Treasury guidelines for the delegation of powers.
“This contravention resulted in officials signing off millions outside their financial delegations, thereby affecting internal control systems. The department has reviewed all such delegations for alignment with existing Treasury guidelines.
“The financial delegations of the department have also been revised to ensure such contraventions to the Treasury guidelines are indeed corrected, and accountability for such processes rightfully restored with the required delegated authority within the department based on amounts of funding requested and awards decided upon.”
Gadebe said the panellists made many considerations before deciding whether or not to award funding to applicant NPOs.
He said among those were physical verification of the NPO at registered addresses, observations of services being rendered and verification of the compliance status with the national DSD database.
“Other factors include NPOs flagged as non-compliant on the national DSD database, no access granted or invalid addresses upon site visit.”
The department thanked all the NPOs for their patience during the adjudication period that took place amid a strained climate of investigations and the peddling of mistruths from those opposed to clean governance.
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