October is welfare month, with activities planned around the country. But do we need it, asks Black Sash pension campaigner Rosemary Smith
When the Roman authorities wanted to appease the populace, they laid on bread and circuses. The Department of Welfare’s planned activities for welfare month in October smack of circuses.
Is it the right time to be putting on a show when so much is still rotten in the delivery of social security?
Our experience in the Eastern Cape reveals welfare administration to be in a sorry state. Research conducted by the Grahamstown Black Sash advice office in 1994/95 over a five-month period showed the waiting period after application for pensions was on average 15-months. In 1998 it rocketed to two to three years.
At the end of August, East London had 4 000 old applications still to process. Of the 43 court orders issued this year against the MEC on individual pension cases, only 15 have been complied with.
In May, 800 grant application forms were dumped outside the Zwelitsha pension offices. Some were dated 1996, and some had been used as toilet paper – an illustration of the contempt in which officials apparently hold applicants.
The recent poverty hearings in the Eastern Cape illustrated clearly how people are left desperate and confused by their attempts at applying for social security.
One testified: “Officials arrive late, at about 11am or noon, anytime they choose. The officials take out two chairs. Then the computer dies. They tell people to go home. The same thing the next day. At some point they announce that the money is finished.”
Said another: “The clerks always tell us the problem is in Bisho, and we don’t even know where Bisho is from here.”
Communication between official and pensioner is poor, yet in the White Paper on transforming public service delivery, the eight principles of batho pele (people first) state that citizens should be treated with courtesy and consideration; if the promised standard of service is not delivered, citizens should be offered an apology, a full explanation and a speedy and effective remedy; and when complaints are made, citizens should receive a sympathetic and positive response.
Our Constitution states that everyone is entitled to just administrative action, giving citizens the right to be treated fairly and given written reasons if treated unfairly.
Putting inserts in newspapers is not going to deal with this problem.
In August 1997, when a moratorium on processing new grants was put in place, circulars were placed in Eastern Cape newspapers in accessible language, but they did not help the ordinary citizen understand why the grants were not coming through.
For NGOs battling with a lack of information from the welfare department, the situation is difficult. In the three Black Sash advice offices in the Eastern Cape, the waiting rooms are daily filled with people asking for help in gaining access to information on their applications.
Officials are seldom available to respond to queries. Telephones and letters remain un- answered. A crisis toll-free hotline has been suggested, but nothing has come of this idea. The office of the pensioners’ friend, which was useful in tracking difficult cases and complaints, has been closed.
Personnel are very thin on the ground. In Grahamstown the pension office has to be closed for inquiries for two weeks every month while the pension payouts are being done. There is an urgent need for more personnel and vigorous training of personnel from provincial to district level.
Given the history of the Eastern Cape during the apartheid years, it is perhaps not surprising that one very large poor province without significant revenue from industry and agriculture is faltering now.
Having to amalgamate the two previous homelands of the Ciskei and Transkei has not helped. The problems with the poor administration, non-delivery of pensions, fraud and corruption go back a long way.
But, as the records of the advice office show, after devolution of power and provincial autonomy, matters have become considerably worse.
Papering up the cracks by putting on a circus is not helping. Money would be better spent in addressing the problems of staffing, training and communication.
Are there answers? Rescheduling the provincial budget is difficult because of the huge salary bill for civil servants. Are there departments not using their allocated budgets? Should pensions be a provincial concern? Would central government manage any better?
There are many questions which bread and circuses will not address.
By all means let us join hands and fight poverty, but let the welfare department get its house in order first before an expensive public relations exercise is undertaken.