CHILD MAINTENANCE HEADACHE FOR ESWATINI

MBABANE – Eswatini, through the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office, is challenged when it comes to tracing of parents or guardians who default on paying child maintenance.

The kingdom has been recording an increase in child maintenance cases, causing a headache for maintenance officers as the parents evade paying and/or cannot be traced. Recently, this publication reported how in the past three months, the Manzini Magistrates Court has been issuing at least a garnishee order every three days against a member of the Umbutfo Eswatini Defence Force (UEDF). The orders for maintenance were issued by the Manzini Magistrates Court since mid-October 2020 to late January 2021. Garnishment is a legal process for collecting a monetary judgment on behalf of a plaintiff from a defendant. Garnishment allows the plaintiff to take the money or property of the debtor from the person or institution that holds that property. In the Kingdom of Eswatini, the legal instrument that deals with maintenance issues is the Children’s Protection and Welfare Act (CPWA) 2012.

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Section 212 of the Act stipulates that a parent or any other person who is legally liable to maintain a child or contribute towards the maintenance of the child is under a duty to supply the necessities of food, clothing, health, life, education and reasonable shelter for the child. As per the provisions of the Act, the Department of Social Welfare carries a mandate to ensure that the basic needs of children are met through enforcing maintenance laws to parents who infringe on the rights of children who need to be taken care of by their parents. The DPM’s Office’s annual performance report for the financial year 2020/21 states that maintenance complaints still continue to lead the department’s service delivery.

“In the Social Welfare Offices around the country, there are sometimes serious challenges experienced towards getting respondents to comply with invitations because of changed addresses and contact numbers, and some just defy the invitations. Subsequently, such challenges significantly contribute towards increasing the number of cases that are kept pending for longer periods,” reads part of the annual report. It further states that the department refers such matters to court for purposes of obtaining garnishee orders in cases wherein the respondents fail to comply with the agreement made at the Social Welfare Offices. In neighbouring South Africa, it was announced last month that the Department of Justice and Correctional Services says it’s coming for child maintenance defaulters who don’t want to be found.

According to IOL News, the department will soon implement a new system using various online databases and ‘information hubs to track and trace parents who refuse to pay child maintenance. It plans to use company registrations, cellphone numbers registered with network service providers, credit bureau info, vehicle registrations, and other paper trails to find maintenance defaulters. The new system, according to the publication, will help the courts finalise more cases and assess those errant parents who should be paying child support.
The latest developments in the neighbouring country raise the question whether the Kingdom of Eswatini could go the same route.

This publication engaged the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office’s Social Welfare Department on the issue and, through its Communications Department; it confirmed that it faced challenges.
The department said all it did was mediate on issues of maintenance whereby it brought the concerned parties and discussed on how a child could be maintained and further advised the parties on the laws regulating maintenance. “Once parties reach a consensus, then an agreement is made and the expectation is that parties will be bound by the agreement. We do not have a mechanism of tracing maintenance defaulters as in most cases we rely on the information that is given to us whether by the complainant or the respondent. We do not have means to trace a defaulter if their place of employment, abode or contact is not known as we do not have any other mechanism to do the tracing. Once a person changes his or her employment without giving notice, it becomes a problem to trace him or her,” the department stated.

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