The Gauteng Department of Social Development has embarked on a rigorous NPO (non-profit organisation) adjudication process, paving the way for reviewing and the signing of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with complying and successful NPOs for the 2024/25 financial year.
“Over 1732 applications were received collectively tallying an amount of over R11.4 billion in financial requests – an amount far greater than the department’ s overall budget of R5.5 billion.
“This meant that 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 its impractical to fund the entire R11.4 billion,” said the provincial government in a statement on Wednesday.
It further added that the process to invite eligible NPOs to sign the SLAs is now underway and has been centralised to the Department of Social Development (DSD) headquarters to be coordinated by the accounting officer.
This process was previously decentralised to officials in regional offices, which has been found to be in contravention of Treasury Guidelines in terms of delegation of powers.
The contravention resulted in officials signing of millions that are outside of their financial delegations, thereby affecting internal control systems.
The Department has reviewed all such delegations to be aligned to 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,” the department said.
It further added that many considerations had to be made before the “panellists could decide on whether or not funding could be awarded to applicant NPOs.”
Amongst those were physical verification of the NPO at registered addresses, observations of services being rendered and also verification of the compliance status with the national DSD database.
As per commitment, successful NPOs are being contacted as of the first week of April 2024, to come to head office for signing of SLAs.
“The department wishes to thank all NPOs for exercising patience during the adjudication period, which took place in a very difficult climate of investigations, and peddling of mistruths from those opposed to clean governance,” it said. – SAnews.gov.za
