Twenty of 40 KwaZulu-Natal civil servants charged with defrauding the social-grant system made their first court appearances at the Durban Commercial Court this week, The Witness website reported on Friday.
The cases against the 20 employees from two departments — health and education — were postponed to November 29. The other 20 were expected appear in the commercial court on Friday.
The 40, mostly from Durban, were arrested in a nationwide campaign that clamped down on thousands of civil servants illegally collecting social grants.
”The majority of the cases are in respect of the child-support grants involving beneficiaries who either did not qualify for the grant from the beginning or those who were eligible in the beginning but became disentitled after their financial circumstances changed but nonetheless carried on receiving benefits,” national Departmental of Social Development spokesperson Lakela Kaunda said.
The head of the department’s investigating unit, Dan Maloka, who was in Durban for the court appearances on Wednesday, told The Witness that many of those implicated in KwaZulu-Natal concealed their employment status when applying for grants.
Most were women and most of the fraud relates to child-support grants.
Maloka said the unit is investigating at least 22 000 KwaZulu-Natal civil servants who illegally registered for pension grants through the country’s Scopen system. Most of them have deregistered as a result of the investigation.
He said the campaign is not only about convicting corrupt individuals.
”What we are saying is that we want the department’s money back as well. Since June this year, we have managed to recover about R2,4-million nationwide.” — Sapa