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The Star reports that the National Arts Council (NAC), which has come under fire for alleged mismanagement of funds to beneficiaries, is investigating way of improving allocation, according to board member Dr Sipho Sithole.
Last year, the Presidency made a special employment stimulus programme available to the sector to disburse via the NAC and the National Film and Video Foundation. The Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme (Pesp) was supposed to be geared towards employment creation and retention initiatives for artists, creatives, heritage sector workers and cultural workers. The initiative was in response to the pandemic that affected creatives who did not often have a 9 to 5 job and relied heavily on the gig economy, which came to a standstill under lockdown. The R300 million Pesp fund started taking applicants from October. The NAC was supposed to disburse the money through two funding streams – R100m to enable job retention and R200m for work opportunities within the arts. Since then, the council has suspended its CE and CFO pending an investigation into the mishandling of the funds which resulted in applicants not receiving the money promised to them. In a radio interview, Sithole said the NAC had appointed industry experts outside the council to go through the applications. He said there were many applications that had been turned down, leaving the council with 1,374 in total. Sithole added that part of the reason why the Pesp fund went over budget was because they had underestimated the size of the industry.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Mpiletso Motumi at The Star
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