Scholar transport woes in the NW continue over payment delays

Scholar transport woes in the North West remain far from being resolved. While the Department of Transport in the province says over 50 percent of outstanding invoices have been processed and paid, service providers say the backlog persists.

The department says the delay is compounded by glitches in internal payment processes.

Operators say the non-payment of invoices is having an adverse impact on the transportation of learners.

“There is no payment that is coming through, it’s drip by drip. So, we are experiencing a very serious challenge as service providers and we are up to here. They are treating us as scum bags,” says an operator.

“The department is just ducking and diving. Every week they say they will pay us but until today nothing is happening but the department isn’t blamed for anything. Everything is blamed on us because we have to transport the learners. They don’t acknowledge that we don’t have money, there is nothing,” says another transport provider.

Transport MEC Wessels Morweng has attributed payment delays to recent technical issues with the Basic Accounting System used for payments.

“On the delay of payments, we had received 928 invoices and to date 552 have been processed. We experienced a system failure which affected processing of these payments. As a result, we have requested Treasury to allow us to disburse two payments per week instead of one. We are currently using manual invoice tracking system which is problematic and prone to errors. One other problem with the manual system is that we are unable to see where there are delays in the value chain.”