After months of struggling due to a halt in funding from the Department of Social Development, The McKaiser Old Age Home finally received their monthly grant from the department on Wednesday.
After months of struggling due to a halt in funding from the Department of Social Development, The McKaiser Old Age Home finally received their monthly grant from the department on Wednesday.
When McKaiser Old Age Home board member and caretaker John Sphere spoke to Grocott's Mail two weeks ago, the Home, which is constituted as a non-profit organisation (NPO) had not received funds from the Department for the past two months.
"We would normally receive the money on the 25th or last day of every month but we were now approaching the third month of not receiving any money from the Social Development," Sphere said at the time.
Chairperson of the Home, Jonathan Walton, said the funds were used for groceries, medication, payment of staff, and nappies for the elderly.
"It has been an unbearable situation because with no cash flow, the Home survives on the monthly boarding fees paid by residents," he said.
The monthly boarding fees are R1 008 per month.
The Department of Social Development's district communications officer, Mzukisi Matinise, said that at the beginning of each financial year, the NPOs submit their business plans to the district office.
They then draw up a master list which goes to the provincial office.
The province issues allocation letters to the national office of the Department of Social Development that state the number of employees a particular NPO has.
According to Matinise, the Mckaiser Old Age Home allocation letters had an error that stated that the organisation only had six employees.
The organisation in fact has double that many staff, and this is what caused the delay in funding, Matinise said.
"We rectified this matter as a department and we sent the allocation letters back to the provincial office within three days," he said.
Walton said the Home has 12 employees and 22 residents.
He said the residents were not directly affected by this ordeal because the Home bought the things they needed on credit.
Linda Boesak, a caretaker at the Home, said until this week's payment, she'd been without a salary since the end of April.
She said as a single parent, she'd struggled to put food on the table.
"I came to work every day on an empty stomach. My debts were increasing and my policy lapsed," she said.
Driver at the Home, Nico Janse Van Rensburg, said he'd had to borrow money to support his family and for basic living expenses.
"The money that I borrowed accumulated interest and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to pay it on time," he said.
Walton said staff were relieved to have received their pay.
He said on 27 July, he and other NPO representatives would be meeting with the District's chief operations officer to "put a couple of concerns on the table" and to also come up with ways to prevent future funding gaps.
