The South African government department tasked with the well-being of the country’s military veterans acknowledged, in reply to a Parliamentary question, “it sometimes takes longer to register on the database” when asked why delays of up to a year are reported.
Chris Hattingh, the Democratic Alliance (DA) National Assembly (NA) point man in the party’s defence and military veterans’ oversight team asked Minister Angie Motshekga to explain the reasons behind “the lengthy period” needed to register for veteran benefits. His question, according to the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG), is based on him being told by a Department of Military Veterans (DMV) “official” it takes a year for an old soldier to register to be eligible for benefits ranging from pension and healthcare through to education and business assistance.
The reply, signed off by Motshekga, has it the DMV acknowledges it “sometimes take longer to register applicants on the database due to the time period it takes for applicants to submit outstanding documents after the initial submission of application forms”.
The Ministerial response then lists three stages of the application process. The first is receipt of the application and communication sent to acknowledge receipt; followed by quality assurance stage where all submitted documents are validated and “once there are outstanding documents, the applicant is informed to request for outstanding documents” with this specified as the stage where registration delays are experienced. Lastly, if all documents are in order and the application meets registration criteria the applicant is registered on the database and informed of their registration status.
The old soldiers’ database, Hattingh was told, has 87 484 names on it. This is broadly in line with the “over 87 000” number given to Hattingh in a March Parliamentary question. The Ministerial reply that time noted the number registered “changed daily” as applications were received.
That month he was told the registration backlog was being addressed by the DMV, currently managed by Acting Director-General Nontobeko Mafu. “The clearance of the backlog, coupled with regular communication to applicants for submission of outstanding supporting documents within the fixed application process time in line with an updated standard operating procedure (SOP) will help improve the length of the entire processing period” the applicable portion of the Motshekga response reads.
Hattingh was told that 8 956 applicants were registered since 2019 while 444 applicants were rejected and 600 still have outstanding documents.
Since March veterans have a further avenue to approach the DMV for database registration. A new email account – [email protected] – is apparently up and running.
