The Departments of Basic Education and Labour have confirmed they have resolved issues that led to the delayed payment of September stipends for school assistants, with officials promising funds will land in beneficiaries’ accounts “in no time.”
The delay was attributed to challenges in the timely submission and verification of necessary documents, a critical step in the payment process for the hundreds of thousands of young people employed in schools through a presidential initiative.
In a televised interview, Deputy Minister of Labour, Jomo Sibiya, expressed the government’s sympathy for the affected assistants and detailed the complex funding flow that led to the bottleneck.
Sibiya explained that the programme is funded by the Department of Employment and Labour through the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF). The funds are then released to the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), which is responsible for dispersing the stipends to the individual beneficiaries.
However, before any money is released, the Department of Basic Education must submit verified registers to ensure payments are made only to qualified and deserving individuals.
“This process is part of sealing and fireproofing the entire process as per government financial systems,” Sibiya stated, emphasizing the need for accountability and to prevent payments to “deceased people or persons who are paid unduly.”
When pressed on the root cause of the backlog, the Deputy Minister avoided attributing direct blame, stating that a high-level meeting had just concluded involving the Minister of Basic Education and teams from UIF, the Department of Employment and Labour, and the IDC.
“The most important and critical thing for us is to work around the clock in making sure that these young people don’t get to be delayed any further without getting their monies,” Sibiya said. “We understand very well how it impacts them.”
He assured the public that significant progress had been made, stating, “We have managed to deal with quite a lot of issues. We’ve managed to clean whatever that has not been cleaned.”
While a precise public timeline was withheld pending a further announcement, Sibiya committed to a resolution “less than a week.” He acknowledged the severe personal hardships the delay has caused, with many assistants struggling to pay rent and cover basic necessities.
Sibiya also indicated that consequence management would follow the resolution of the crisis. “Indeed, there will be people who didn’t do their work… I can assure South Africans that indeed consequences will be there,” he said, vowing to hold responsible parties accountable for the systemic failure.