1) The overall feeling of Ma's is that the bill is a necessary but insufficient intervention. The major obstacles for a successful implementation of the provisions are predictable and have been identified repeatedly. Very little has been done administratively to address these concerns and there is a likelihood that a similar fate awaits this bill as that of the Maintenance Amendment Act of 1991.
2) In the third session of the First Parliament (Week 3-7 June 1996) Ms Mary Turok of the ANC tabled written question no. 364 to the Minister of Justice. The thrust of the question was to ascertain the current number of maintenance files nationally, steps to computerise these files and the level of training of personnel tasked with administering the System.
The response of the Minister was that the Department has no idea how many files fall under the control of the Department and such an exercise would be time-consuming and economically not feasible. The computerisation aspect was explained by the fact that the information technology platform was being put out to tender, and that training was largely done in-house. We respectfully submit that this remains the situation today and that as a direct result it is impossible to budget accurately the costs of implementing this bill.
3) In the Report of the Lund Committee on Child and Family Support submitted in August 1996, a detailed analysis of the problems facing the Parental Maintenance System was included as Appendix 8. The feeling was that while legislative amendments would be welcomed, many of the solutions lay in implementation of the existing Act.
4) Budgetary Constraints:
While it is not possible to extrapolate the costs of implementing the bill, some informed guesses can be made:
4.1) Deduction from Wages Notices - the aim here is to collect at source (where possible) and remove the discretion of the liable person to just refuse to pay. It would appear that every Magistrates Court in the country would be empowered to issue such notices, and sanctions are put in place to compel companies to comply as well as to inform the court of any change in employment, details of packages etc. In the light of the current state of administration, the Dept of Justice would itself be unaware of how many notices are being granted and individual Courts would be unaware of any notices served by another court. Labour intensive companies would not be able to obtain information or assistance relating to any such notice from any other source except the court of origin.
4.2) Civil Execution to recover unpaid Maintenance - Recovery Orders are brought into the picture here. This would appear to be a move towards an entirely civil process. The problem being that the magistrates who would be expected to implement here are largely junior in status with only criminal law experience. This might mean that we will see a great percentage of the warrants of execution being suspended. The Dept would however not be aware of this in the absence of any statistics. Reference is further made to the attachment of pensions. There has been considerable difficulty experienced with this in the past with financial institutions making it really difficult to put this into practice.
5) Orders Made in Absence of Respondent - Here the idea is to speed up the process. The problem is that this can only be done if a subpoena is served. Currently many individual Courts insist on the issuance of a warning letter to save costs. If this practice continues then the amendment will not work. If courts are now to begin issuing subpoena's in all instances then a budgetary allocation will need to be made. The question is how large an allocation?
6) Tracing - The number of missing fathers is unknown but from our own records the incidence is high. There will need to be a budgetary allocation in this regard. Also, by linking the service of court process to the tracing it eliminates people such as ourselves from tendering. This could create a monopolistic situation which could cost the Department huge amounts of money.
In summary, to the extent that this bill demonstrates the commitment of the department to improve the current system, it should be welcomed. However the System is so poorly resourced that urgent attention needs to be put on creating a infrastructure capable of such service delivery. In this regard the Lund Committee recommendations should urgently be revisited. If the committee wishes me to illuminate the manifest problems facing this bill in more detail, then I an available for oral representation.
Y de Jong.
Director of Maintenance Assistance Services (MA's)