Question NW224 to the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services
05 March 2024 - NW224
Maseko-Jele, Ms NH to ask the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services
(1) Whether any impact assessment of the track-and-trace system that is aimed at addressing issues regarding defaulters of child maintenance has been made; if not, what is the position in this regard; if so, what are the findings; (2) how is his department dealing with the concealment by defaulting parents of income and assets in the informal sector
Reply:
1. No impact assessment has been conducted of the current Maintenance Track and Trace System as it has been found to be generally helpful by Maintenance Investigators. This system is used in conjunction with manual investigation mechanism where further or additional information is required. In response to what is the position in regard to an assessment being conducted, there are no plans in place to conduct an impact assessment of the system as it is a private provider system and plans are underway to support it through the development of a Person Verification System which will enable intergovernmental information sharing as an initiative to be implemented in conjunction with the Integrated Justice System (IJS).
2. Various forms of manual or physical investigations are conducted into the financial information of an informal trader or business owner who defaults on paying maintenance obligation in line any Maintenance Order. This manual or physical investigations include searching of financial information through conducting in-depth banking information analysis of Contra Nepsa reports obtained from several banking institutions through issuance of subpoenas on the individuals. These reports provide a trail of inflows and outflows of movement of funds from different accounts and to different banks. This provides expenditure trends which are analyzed and submitted to courts for consideration.
Where an informal trader or business owner is not found on the banking system a lifestyle trend analysis is drawn to track and trace the expenditure trends. Here institutions including Local Government’s Vehicle Registration Departments are approached to determine whether the individual owns any vehicle(s) or whether any of his payees from his or accounts own vehicles used by the person investigated, Deeds Offices are serve with subpoenas to determine home ownership or ownership of persons with close personal relations whose homes are used as residential premises of the person investigated. These are linked with the Contra Nepsa reports to determine whether other persons may be concealing properties or monies belonging to the person investigated. SARS searches are also conducted to determine whether income tax payment trends or whether there are any monies due to the individual investigated. These manual or physical investigations are conducted according to the circumstances of each individual Application.