The Jesuit Refugee Service’s branch in Louis Trichardt will in all likelihood close its doors at the end of the month. This will be a devastating blow to the hundreds of people who are reliant on this organisation for assistance.

The Jesuit Refugee Service, more commonly known as JRS, has been active in the region for quite some time and handles some 4 000 cases per year. The staff members focus their efforts on the needs of the migrants crossing the borders of the country. Many of these people are undocumented and in most cases they flee from their own countries because of political unrest or simply because of the dire socio-economic circumstances there.

The JRS project director stationed in Louis Trichardt, Ms Bertha Chiguvare, confirmed this week that they will in all likelihood have to close their doors. This is mostly due to the withdrawal of the project’s major funders. The main sponsor, a German-based NGO, opted to move the funds to another country.

For Bertha and her team this is a big setback, but more so for the projects that are currently being run by JRS. “The past year we looked after 181 children,” she explained. The children are placed in shelters in, among other places, Tshikota. JRS supports them with food parcels and also enrols them in training programmes, so as to equip them for the future.

One of the main projects of JRS focuses on people who are HIV positive. Currently, more than 150 such patients are being cared for. JRS has the services of a qualified and experienced social worker as well as two auxiliary social workers. They investigate each case to see how JRS can assist.

In the past couple of years, JRS has probably done more than any other local organisation to cater for the unfortunate ones who end up sleeping in the streets. When a person arrives in the area and has no place to go to, they often end up knocking on JRS’s doors for help. Each case is investigated and the people are documented. JRS works very closely with law-enforcement authorities and with other social service institutions to ensure that the limited available resources are maximised.

Internationally, the Jesuit Refugee Service is very active and operates in 10 regions spanning more than 50 countries. The organisation has strong ties with the Catholic Church and was founded by one of its priests, Father Pedro Arrupe, in Cambodia in November 1980. The goal of JRS is “to work in areas where there is a real and present need among forcibly displaced people and where other agencies are not present.”

JRS places a lot of emphasis on training as part of the assistance it offers, and in Louis Trichardt, several institutions were roped in to help cater for this need. The training projects included sewing classes, hairdressing courses and even computer proficiency training. Some of the courses were also conducted in outlying areas such as Magau and Tshiozwi, where a large number of the displaced people stay.

As far as the future is concerned, Bertha and her team of eight dedicated staff members are uncertain about the direction that it will go. They will officially close at the end of December, but will wrap up the various projects during January and February next year.

At the time of our going to press there were talks of a meeting between different stakeholders to discuss future options. The stakeholders included other service organisations that try and cater for the needy in the region as well as government departments.