The National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) has provided the following responses.
1. (a) The Board was appointed on 27 March 2014. At that stage, the NIHSS was a new organisation and did not have policies and procedures in place. The remuneration of the Board members was therefore aligned to the “2014 Remuneration of Board Members” circular, Category A, Sub-category A2, which indicates that a daily rate of R3 648 shall be paid to the Chairperson and R2 880 to ordinary members. These rates were lowered to R3 500 for the Chairperson and R2 500 for ordinary members.
(b) Claims for expenditure for board members are reimbursed provided it was incurred for the business purposes related to the NIHSS.
(c) There were no specific benefits that accrued to board members, other than
re-imbursement of travel/subsistence or expenditure incurred while carrying out the duties of the NIHSS.
2. Yes.
(a) Office space was provided for meetings held by board members on the NIHSS premises. This was for carrying out the duties of the NIHSS.
(b) This was limited to instances for carrying out the duties of the NIHSS.