The Department of Cooperative Governance (DCOG) has made considerable progress in the payments of Once-Off Gratuity to qualifying non-returning councillors following the 2021 Local Government Elections.
The department has thus far made all payments, except for those whose applications documents have questions and/or not fully submitted. This translates to a total of 4 696 (93.4%) non returning councillors paid from the 5 029 applications received. As of 22 February 2022, over R225 million has been paid as gratuity to the non-returning councillors.
The Department continues to work on the remaining applications that have queries such as:
- incorrect basic salary and/or total annual remuneration.
- start and end date discrepancies between the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) data and documents submitted.
- and incorrect or missing SARS Tax reference numbers.
These queries have been referred back to the relevant municipalities and/or provinces. Once all the queries from the remaining applications are addressed, the department will speedily finalise the payments well ahead of the set deadline of 31 March 2022.
Please direct all Once-Off Gratuity related queries to the following email address: counspay@cogta.gov.za
Media Enquiries:
Lungi Mtshali
Cell: 0820885060