Faced with the Department of Social Development’s failure (DSD) to respond to a memorandum on the unpaid Early Childhood Development Employment Stimulus Relief Funds (ECD-ESRF), the Centre for Early Childhood Development (CECD) has decided to escalate the matter through legal channels.
On Thursday 17 March, about 200 Early Childhood Development (ECD) principals, teachers, activists, service organisations and parents protested outside Parliament for the benefit of ECD workers across South Africa still awaiting payment of ECD-ESRF. A memorandum detailing the workers’ plight and their demands was handed over to DSD with the request that these demands are met by no later than Monday 4 April.
The department’s response, says Yusrah Ehrenreich, Advocacy and Social Justice Manager at CECD, was complete silence.
“We, along with the many who attended the protest are deeply disappointed that DSD appeared before a mass group, heard the stories and struggles of the ECD community, received the demands, yet failed to respond to the demands by the deadline of Monday 4 April.”
She adds that the CECD has no other option but to escalate this matter through legal channels “to ensure all outstanding ECD workers are paid, and DSD does not lose over R250 million”.
A year ago, People’s Post reported how the survival of early childhood development (ECD) centres across the country and in our own backyard were becoming more precarious (“ECD centre struggles”, 27 April 2021) as many waited on financial assistance promised by the fund.
DSD had promised to pay out the fund to over 108 833 ECD principals, teachers and other staff by the end of the 2020-’2021 financial year – 31 March 2021. Having failed to meet this deadline, the available funds were rolled over for another year. As the second end-of-financial year hit at the end of March this year, more than 58 000 ECD’s still had not received the payment of the funds.
Ehrenreich says with two years having passed and the DSD still not having been able to spend the money, two different issues are currently at play. First, DSD will now again have to apply for the funds to be rolled over, and secondly, she says, with each rollover, it seems the amount of money available is getting less.
For example, Ehrenreich says in January 2021, approximately R496 million was allocated to the fund for ECD programmes to apply to. She says at the initial deadline for payment (31 March 2021), only R38 million had been paid out with R458 million still to be paid.
“The DSD had to apply for funds to be rolled over into the 2021-’2022 budget. But roll-over approval was only granted for R351 million – R41 million was ‘lost’ in the roll-over process,” says Ehrenreich.
As ECD workers wait to see how the latest roll-over process will affect the available funds, those working and living in the Western Cape have a slightly more favourable forecast.
The Western Cape government received R53 million as part of the fund. The Western Cape DSD managed to ring-fence its allocation and move it to an intermediary, the Foundation for Community Work (FCW.) This non-profit organisation was appointed as the service provider in March to assist with the fund payments to those eligible ECD centres that were still waiting to receive funding.
“The other provinces, however, still have their Stimulus Relief Fund allocations on their books, and thereby run the risk of losing unspent rolled-over funds at the end of the 2021-2022 financial year if the National Treasury cannot or will not provide a second rollover of unspent funds,” says Ehrenreich.
At mid-March this year, of the 3 143 fund applications received by DSD in the Western Cape, 1 353 (5 888 staff) had been processed and paid out. With the end of the financial year approaching (31 March 2022), the Western Cape Minister for Social Development Sharna Fernandez assured the ECD sector that the payments of the fund would extend beyond the financial year. She also assured the sector that it would not be impacted by the then-pending ECD migration from DSD to the Department of Basic Education (DBE).
On Friday 1 April, the responsibility of ECD transferred from the provincial Department of Social Development to the Western Cape Education Department (WCED). Going forward, the WCED is now responsible for supporting, subsidising and regulating the ECD programmes according to the specifications in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 of the Children’s Act.
People’s Post contacted WCDE, asking how the transfer was likely to affect fund payments and by when the latest WCED aimed to pay out the outstanding payments. By the time of going to print, the WCED had not yet responded.
Eric Atmore, the director and founder of CEDC, says WCED now carries responsibility for seeing that the ECD workforce details are verified and that the funds are distributed.
“WCED has given the same assurance. We have no information on when the payments will be concluded,” he says.
