AGRICULTURAL NEWS - The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) recently supplied Farmer’s Weekly with its report, Draft 2016/17 Drought Scheme, which showed that a large portion of the R212 million allocated for drought assistance did reach farmers, but often too late.
Mike Mlengana, director-general of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, says most of the drought fund had been distributed, and that Agri SA did not have all the information to make a correct spending assessment. According to him, there was some malice from the Agri SA side, and all stakeholders needed to work together to take agriculture forward.
Farmer’s Weekly previously reported that Agri SA had made an urgent request to the Office of the Public Protector and the Auditor-General of South Africa to conduct a forensic audit into alleged discrepancies in the distribution of drought aid and funds.
Agri SA alleged that DAFF had spent only R146 million of the aid funds that it had been allocated, and that numerous discrepancies were found in the distribution of the aid.
Media reports showed that in 2015, five provinces had already been declared drought disaster areas, with eight provinces being declared such by mid-2016.
DAFF’s report however, showed that most provinces received their first drought aid only in November 2016, with some receiving aid as late as March 2017, when the drought had already been broken by rain in some regions.
“Some farmers indicated that feed was no longer necessary after the rains,” the report said about KwaZulu-Natal, one of the country’s worst affected regions.
