chaos
Paul Kirk For the second time in two weeks a Durban High Court judge has demanded the Deputy Director General of the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Welfare and Population Development, Eric Mhlongo, appear in his court to explain the chaos that seemingly reigns within his department. Both judges are threatening to make Mhlongo personally – and financially – responsible for the maladministration of his department. Depending on his explanation Mhlongo may be forced to pay the huge legal fees his department incurs trying to defend litigation by pensioners. This week Judge Jan Combrink ordered that Mhlongo appear in his court on September 18 to explain himself. Last week Judge Phillip Levinsohn made a similar ruling. The motion roll in the Durban High Court has become littered with cases of pensioners taking the welfare department to court. This week more than 40 cases involving pensioners were on the motion roll. As a gesture of goodwill Durban lawyer Charles Bell has offered to take his 40 cases against the department off the motion roll. This, Bell said, is being done to allow the department to rectify errors that have seen his clients denied their pensions. Should the department not be cooperative Bell has vowed to put all the cases back on the motion roll. Sources within the state attorney’s office said the welfare department was paying “hundreds of thousands” every month in legal bills.
The Black Sash’s Ashnie Padarath said pensioners are increasingly being forced to litigate as they find themselves unjustly being denied pensions to which they are entitled. Padarath said that, while her organisation has been accused of hampering service delivery by tying up the department in litigation, her clients are forced to turn to the courts due to the department’s intransigence.
Said Padarath: “The department is often very unhelpful and not at all eager to help. The result is that pensioners come to us and other NGOs and we obtain legal representation for them. Lawyers are quite keen to represent pensioners against the department. The pensioners invariably have a watertight case and the lawyers know they will be awarded costs when they win.” Padarath said that litigation against the department was so commonplace and chaos at the pension pay points so rife that some people made a living acting as touts for lawyers at pension pay points. This week the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Welfare and Population Development was the sole topic of the Black Sash’s representation on the abuse of the elderly at a hearing organised this week by national Minister of Welfare and Population Development Dr Zola Skweyiya.
According to the representation by the Black Sash it can take more than a year for the department to process a simple pension application. This long waiting period forces many pensioners into borrowing money from moneylenders at exorbitant interest rates, locking them into a spiralling cycle of debt. Pensioners also routinely have a portion of their meagre allowances stolen by pension officials and are often “reluctant to report such incidents for fear of their safety”. Recently the province’s welfare department boasted that it had suspended 29E000 pensions as being possibly fraudulent. But according to the Black Sash, while fraud is rife in the department, many of the suspended pensions were perfectly legitimate. “The irony is that pensions are usually suspended due to incompetence on the part of the welfare department and not through any skulduggery on the part of the pensioner. Another common reason for suspension of a pension is that the pensioner has been declared dead. The onus of proving that the pensioner is still alive is another costly and time-consuming process which causes great financial and emotional distress to the suspended beneficiary.” The Black Sash pulled no punches in its submission, concluding that the department was in violation of the Constitution. “We believe that the conditions under which the department of welfare administers and pays pensions is a violation of many of the rights of the elderly in our society. It is said that the measure of a society is the manner in which it treats its sick and old. We have failed them dismally.” The department is presided over by MEC Prince Gideon Zulu, who is currently suing the Mail & Guardian for a series of articles about alleged impropriety within his department.