Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Small Businesses said they were not aware that small businesses in the North West received only a portion of the funds meant to support emerging businesses allocated by the national government.
The small business owners told the Committee members they received R3 500 instead of the R10 500 from the Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEDA) and the Small Enterprise Finance Agency (SEFA) set up by the government as the vehicle to support small businesses.
This emerged during an oversight visit by the Committee that was accompanied by the Deputy Minister of Small Business Dipuo Peters.
The Committee’s acting chairperson, Hein April, said they are definitely going to take to task those responsible for the shortage.
“According to us this money has been dispersed and we would like to know how this impasse happened, it is totally unacceptable,” April said.
Peters, accused the agencies of running down companies and stopped short of saying they were lied to.
“We are now told that SEFA is depositing some of the money, they shouldn’t wait for us to be here because these people must run their businesses. They are running down companies. That is one thing that actually disappointed me. I arrive here and I’m told it was R10,500 only to find out it’s R3500. But we will dig deep into that,” said Peters.
However, SEFA’s senior manager, Lehane Letlatsa, put the blame on the shoulders of the business owners whom she said changed their contact details.
“The actual offering is R10 500. When the scheme started the clients were getting R3 500 as a grant, and the other R3 500 was supposed to be a credit, which the clients never took. A year later the scheme was then revised and the offering was then increased to R10 500, which meant those who had already received R3 500 would automatically get R7 000 without the need for them to apply.
“But the new applicants would then apply for R10 500 straight. Those ones who have received R3 500, we have their list. And the bank has been dispersing money into their accounts or rather into their purchasing cards. So most of these clients who have changed their cell phones or lost their cards, are the ones who the bank has not been able to contact.
“However, the money is in their respective purchasing cards. We have verified this with some of the clients, who claim they have not received banking notifications. And they would not get bank notifications because they have changed their cell phone numbers.
“Therefore the bank and us are unable to get hold of them. But when we go through the card numbers we can verify that their accounts are sitting with as much as R7 100,” Letlatsa said.
Some of the owners of the businesses visited by the team, complained that the funding provided by the government was not enough and unable to sustain them.
The owner of the Boiteko Enterprise at Madibe village, Mmanini Vlaarmuis, said she needed to keep borrowing money to sustain her business.
Ramosesane Tselapedi of Tselapedi Enterprise, in Lokaleng village, raised concern about restrictions when using the R3 500 funding.
“The first shop where we could buy with this voucher was in Klerksdorp in Jouberton, the other one in Rustenburg. They had also informed us that the other shop was in Zeerust; I had to drive there to find out that it was actually closed. So you spend a lot on petrol in order to use that grant,” Tselapedi said.
The team is scheduled to spend two days in the Ngaka Modiri Molema District before proceeding to the Bojanala District Municipality.
