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Panyaza Lesufi’s Nasi iSpani plagued by payment chaos as relaunch looms

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Nasi IspaniDaily Maverick reports that less than a month after Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi announced that his highly criticised Nasi Ispani employment recruitment initiative would be relaunched, more information on the initiative’s struggles to pay the Expanded Public Works Programme workers has come to light.

In 2024, more than 4,000 workers in Lesufi’s “Green Army” project faced significant payment delays, with millions of rands having to be diverted from other departments to cover the stipend shortfalls. Now, as Lesufi pushes ahead with a controversial relaunch of the employment initiative, concerns have been sparked about its funding and sustainability. Lesufi’s Green Army project was launched unfunded in May 2024. Agriculture and Rural Development MEC Vuyiswa Ramokgopa has revealed that between June and November 2024, a total of 4,716 workers in the Green Army had not paid on time by both the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DA&RD) and the Department of the Environment (DOE). When the Nasi iSpani project ended abruptly in November last year (along with all other projects under the Nasi iSpani banner), it had already spent R73-million on the Green Army, an expenditure that left the DA&RDunable to pay service providers. Additionally, another R59-million had to be diverted from the DOE between September and November to pay the stipends of the 6,000 workers in the programme. In a statement on Tuesday, DA Shadow Agriculture MEC Bronwynn Engelbrecht demanded that before Lesufi relaunched Nasi iSpani, the premier had to ensure that “there is enough money to pay all workers on time and that money is not taken from the budgets of other service delivery programmes”.

  • Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Lerato Mutsila at Daily Maverick


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