Overview

• Employment and labour minister Nomakhosazana Meth says September payouts cannot be processed because the basic education department did not submit complete, verified attendance registers on time.
• Basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube counters that her department has submitted all verification documents and that payment processing is the responsibility of the labour department.
• The payment workflow is set by a multiparty funding agreement and an SLA that require the DBE to upload attendance registers by the 15th of each month for DEL and the UIF to verify before releasing funds.
• The programme covers about 158,000 education and general assistants across 20,000 schools, with the UIF having transferred R1.956 billion as a first tranche in late June and DEL contributing more than R4 billion overall.
• DEL says a 29 September meeting secured DBE’s commitment to send outstanding paperwork and pledges to release stipends once registers are received and verified in line with PFMA safeguards.