Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - April 13, 2003
Ilse Fredericks And Mawande Jubasi
The Health Department refused to sign the first-round agreement on the funding process with the UN Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The fund's executive director, Richard Feacham, who has been in South Africa visiting pilot sites over the past 10 days, said they had expected the document to be signed. But the national Treasury denied it had reached this understanding.
Feacham said that until the last moment he had been convinced the government would sign.
"While it is understandable, it was totally unexpected and sudden. One minute we were expecting to leave the country and deliver the money within the next 10 days. Now it's going to take us another few weeks," he said.
"We were not until now asked to clarify any technical problems ."
Health Department spokesman Jo-Anne Collinge said the department was ready to sign the agreement but had been prevented from doing so by "technical complexities identified by the Treasury".
The acting Director-General of the Treasury, Ismael Momoniat, said: "The Cabinet has in principle agreed to the Global Fund programmes as they are.
There was never an understanding to sign.
"We looked at the documents and discovered many technical and legal problems in terms of government procedure."
He said the government was involved in intense talks with fund representatives to resolve these problems.
"We received the draft agreement on Wednesday and when the state legal advisers went through it, they advised us against committing to signing until all our legal and procedural processes have been addressed.
"Politically there is no problem. Cabinet and all ministers have approved these proposals, but government procedure must be followed to the letter."
Momoniat said the fund's African director would be coming to South Africa in May and the government hoped to have addressed the problems by then so the money could be released.
"It still does not mean that the programme in KwaZulu-Natal is at a halt.
The government of KwaZulu-Natal and the province's Enhancing Care Initiative are busy doing relevant work as we speak, so that they are ready to roll once they receive the money," he said.
Aside from KwaZulu-Natal's initial grant of $26.7million, Aids awareness project loveLife will receive $12.1-million and the Soul City project $2.3-million.
KwaZulu-Natal is set to receive a further $45.3-million over the next three years.
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