Presidential Task Team on Military Veterans Progress; National Database for military veterans; NSFAS backlog; with Deputy Minister

Meeting report

The Chairperson welcomed all the participants, and officially opened the meeting. Apologies were acknowledged.

Mr T Mmutle (ANC) proposed that item five of the agenda -- the Department of Military Veterans' (DMV’s) progress report on the status of filling of vacancies -- should be deferred, as the presentation received from the Department did not necessarily provide anything different from what was previously reported. He proposed that the item be deferred and requested the Department return to the Committee with a detailed and comprehensive report addressing the various challenges it faced.

Mr Thabang Makwetla, Deputy Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, said it was disappointing that the Department could not present a comprehensive report on its progress report on filling vacancies. He said that it was the right thing to defer the presentation.

The Committee supported Mr Mmutle’s proposal and the matter was deferred.

Progress of Presidential Task Team on Military Veterans

Deputy Minister Makwetla introduced the delegation which would brief the Committee on the progress of the Presidential Task Team (PTT) on Military Veterans and the various work streams. He said the PTT was executing its work on two legs: firstly, through the work of the established work streams; and secondly, through interaction with the communities of military veterans.

Ms Irene Mpolweni, Director-General (DG), DMV, briefed the Committee on the progress of the PTT's work. She said seven work streams had been identified to support the Department in various aspects. On legislative review, the Ministerial inputs into the proposed amendments were sourced by the Department in November 2021. Technical advice was sought from the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development and the Government Technical Advisory Centre (GTAC) due to a lack of legal personnel in the Department since April 2022 to date.

The Department had to develop a policy consensus document on the issues raised and present it to the Ministry for guidance and approval. The policy consensus was presented to the Advisory Council and submitted to the Ministry in October. The Bill would be submitted to Cabinet as soon as the formal process of inviting public comment was initiated. After this, the process of forwarding the Bill to Parliament would begin.

The Department consulted the Ministry on 1 November for guidance on the organisational redesign process before going ahead with the micro-organisational design. The Minister would set up a task team with the relevant skills and capabilities from within the Ministry to take the process forward.

Concerning database verification, cleansing and enhancement, Ms Mpolweni said that the verification process had to be halted for some time after the Limpopo visits due to internal Departmental challenges. All the Departmental challenges have since been resolved. Maj Gen Enoch Mashoala has since accepted and signed the contract as chairperson of the committee, commencing from 1 November.

The national policy on the Repatriation of Human Remains and Heritage Objects was adopted by Cabinet on 16 March 2021. A Repatriation and Restitution Advisory Committee had been appointed by the Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture to develop criteria, monitor their implementation, and advise on ethical matters related to restoring and repatriating human remains.

The Military Veterans' pension policy was approved by the Presidential Task Team on 26 April. The Department was working on the regulations to operationalise the implementation of the benefit, such as the eligibility and qualifying criteria, the application process, and the appeal process. The next step was to table the regulations in Parliament as soon as possible.

Discussion

The Chairperson commented that the presentation did not reflect the date when each of the tasks mentioned would be concluded. For example, the review of legislation did not have an end date or a delivery date. It was important for the PTT to have a firm timeline.

He said the database verification issue was something the Committee had been briefed about as a work-in-progress in 2019 and to date, it remained an issue. Unless there was a strict follow-up, it seemed like this issue would not be resolved until the end of the Committee’s term. He added that the database verification had to be finalised, as it was at the centre of the Department’s activities.

Mr S Marais (DA) said that since Defence Force aircraft would be used in repatriation, had the PTT consulted with the Department of Defence in this regard, considering the limited number of aircraft available, as many repatriations would have to be done. On the progress on the Ministerial Task Team, he asked if progress was for both statutory and non-statutory beneficiaries.

Mr Mmutle asked the Deputy Minister or the DG to give the Committee confidence on when the PTT would conclude its work. He also asked what action the PTT had taken against the individuals tasked with assisting with the rolling out of the process under the socioeconomic stream, but were delaying the process.

DMV's response

Ms Mpolweni said that she had noted the comments that the Chairperson had made about the timeline for the delivery of the Bill and the organisational review, and a plan would be submitted to the Portfolio Committee accordingly.

Some of the options raised in the new repatriation model included working with various stakeholders, such as the Department of Defence, to understand the relevant protocols involved in using the available resources.

On the support given, she said that all benefits provided by the Department to statutory or non-statutory forces were done under Act 18 of 2018, which had all the guidelines the Department followed.

Deputy Minister Makwetla responded to the question of whether the Presidential Task Team attended to the needs of all military veterans, and said it was dealing with the needs and grievances of both statutory and non-statutory veterans.

He said the legislative review work stream of the PTT was expected to deal with the Amendment Bill of the Military Veterans Act of 2011. The Bill had been the work the DMV had done even before the PTT was established in November 2021. It had not proceeded in a meaningful way. The legislative process resided in the work of the DMV, and was not dependent on what the PTT's work stream was doing. The Department had not been able to make much progress because its employees in the legal division had left the Department, which was the main reason the work on the Amendment Bill had not been moving.

He added that it was inaccurate to say that the Ministry would establish a task team with the relevant expertise to take the matters forward, as this was not the responsibility of the Ministry. The Amendment Bill process was the work of the Department. Therefore, there would be no task team set up by the Ministry.

On organisational redesign, the Deputy Minister said that after issues were raised about the functionality of the Department, the PTT had reported that the Department had focused on the exercise to restructure the DMV to be in line with its mandate. This work did not depend on the workstream of the task team, but on the management of the DMV.

On the issue of socioeconomic support, he said that the PTT was optimistic that it could unlock welfare support through the involvement in a structured way of the DMV, the provinces and the municipalities. The expectation was that the socioeconomic support workstream would deal with housing, education, and health issues. However, the workstream had no evidence of the participation of provinces. For that reason, the PTT was unable to make much progress due to poor collaboration between the DMV and the provinces.

Deputy Minister Makwetla said that the long account that was provided in the presentation of the DG on heritage and memorialisation had nothing to do with the PTT's response to the complaints of military veterans who were concerned about the repatriation of human remains.

The Chairperson stressed that the Portfolio Committee was not satisfied with the slow progress that had been made. He urged that in the next briefing, there should be evidence of clear progress in the work of the PTT.

NSFAS payments backlog

Ms Phumeza Dzuguda, Beneficiary Support Services, DMV, updated the Portfolio Committee on education support challenges DMV-supported students face in public institutions. She said that the outstanding tuition fees dating back to 2018 had been settled, and students had received their qualifications.

The payment of 2021/22 tuition fees was an ongoing process, and the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) updates the DMV on all payments already made. Furthermore, the DMV and NSFAS meet fortnightly for updates on the operations of both entities for the smoother resolution of student queries. There were also quarterly meetings with NSFAS and institutions to follow up on all outstanding issues.

Update on whether military veterans could be posthumously registered

Mr Kobedi Matsafu, Chief Director: Socio Economic Support Services, DMV, said that in line with the Military Veterans Benefits Regulation (Notice 37355 of 2014), posthumous registration of military veterans was exclusively for burial support purposes. Military veterans qualified for burial support at the expense of the state if, at the time of death, they were not employed and received a pension from the state, or were employed and had an annual income of less than R125 000, and were listed as military veterans in the database. In the case of reburials, exhumations and repatriations, Section 16(2) of the Regulations would apply.

Update on national database for military veterans

Mr Matsafu said that the database verification cleaning and enhancement work stream had started its work to verify the authenticity of applications from non-statutory forces in April 2021. Verification had been completed in Gauteng, the Eastern Cape and Limpopo. The project would now start in the North West from mid-November, and would be conducted in other provinces and would be completed by June 2023.

Sufficient progress had been made with developing all technical specifications needed to develop all the system requirements and capabilities of all current and future benefits that the DMV had to dispense to military veterans. Furthermore, the DMV was about to embark on a project that would convert all physical documents into electronic documents. This was the first step towards establishing proper record management for the Department.

Update on military veterans' pension benefit

Mr Sandisa Siyengo, Chief Director: Research and Policy Development, DMV, said that the Military Veterans' pension policy had been approved by the PTT on 26 April. Draft governance documents had been developed between the DMV and the Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA). However, they had not been signed off, as the GPAA had sought further clarity on the finalisation of the policy from the DMV. The GPAA was already working on a payment system to implement the benefit.

Discussion

The Chairperson said that the question that was raised earlier by the Portfolio Committee was on whether military veterans could be registered posthumously for their benefits to be made available to their dependents.

On the issue of NSFAS, how many beneficiaries was the Department paying for at tertiary institutions in the current financial year?

DMV's response

On the pension, Mr Siyengo said that the current policy that had been approved would not be applied retrospectively, which meant that all the military veterans who had passed on before the sign-off of the regulation would not be entitled to the pension benefit.

Regarding educational support, Ms Dzuguda said that if the dependants of deceased military veterans had the necessary documents, such as an unabridged birth certificate, they would be able to access education support.  

She said there were 709 students on education support at tertiary institutions, of whom 403 were at public institutions, and the remainder at private institutions. 2 800 were at basic education institutions. The total target for education support for the year was 3 500, covering both basic and tertiary education.

Adoption of minutes

The minutes of the Committee meeting on 2 November were adopted with no corrections.

The meeting was adjourned.