BusinessLive reports that the Department of Home Affairs has allocated R22m from its April travel and subsistence, and accommodation budgets to cover the cost of purchasing personal protective equipment (PPE) for its staff.  

The same will happen with future month’s budgets should this be necessary, acting director-general of the department Jackson McKay told MPs on Tuesday.  As with other departments, no provision was made for Covid-19 expenditure in the 2020/2021 budget and no additional funding to cater for it is available, so the department has had to find funds within its existing budget.  The PPE provided to staff at offices in each of the provinces and at the ports of entry include surgical masks, gloves and sanitiser, the latter also for use by members of the public.  MPs were told that so far there has only been one case of a Home Affairs employee being infected with Covid-19, in Vryheid, KwaZulu-Natal.  As a precautionary measure the office was closed and a mobile unit deployed.  Home Affairs offices have not been closed during the lockdown, but the only services offered are the registration of deaths, replacement of birth certificates and the issuance of temporary IDs, which are necessary for many people to access the grants government is to make available to the unemployed.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Linda Ensor at BusinessLive

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