Chairperson,
Deputy Minister of Social Development, Ms Bongi Maria Ntuli,
Ministers and Deputy Ministers present,
Members of the Select Committee on Social Services,
MECs present,
Honourable Members.
On this occasion of the debate on Budget Vote 19, I rise, as the Minister of Social Development and on behalf of the Deputy Minister, the Honourable, Bongi Maria Ntuli, to share with this House, the Department’s plans and priorities for this financial year.
Last year, the department received a budget of R105 billion. This financial year, the department’s budget grows to R112 billion to pursue our medium term strategic priorities that will focus on strengthening welfare services, expanding our social security system and facilitating community development.
These priorities constitute the department’s major contribution towards building a caring society. The African National Congress (ANC) government believes that the building of a caring society begins with strong families and vibrant communities. To this end, our policies and programmes are geared to responding to the life cycle needs of all South Africans, as part of families and communities, from their childhood to old age.
Last week in Mpumalanga, Perdekop village, the deputy minister launched the Green Paper on Families, which marked the commencement of government’s consultation with the public on its contents. Families of all shapes and sizes are the most important influence on their members, particularly children.
Government is already providing a range of services to assist families. These include housing, access to free basic services and social grants which enable them to provide for their most basic needs.
As government, we need to affirm parents and equip them with capacities to play both a nurturing and developmental role in the lives of their children. In addition, we need to provide appropriate services to families that are experiencing social and personal challenges.
Chairperson,
The department remains committed to the full realisation of the rights and wellbeing of children by tackling some of their most pressing needs in the first 1 000 days of their lives. Beneficial and protective experiences during this time determine the degree to which a child is able to take full advantage of future opportunities and participate in the world of learning and work. Government provides a basket of services to children, which includes social grants, early childhood development services, nutritional support, healthcare services and targeted free basic education.
Over 10,9 million children receive social grants, with invaluable benefits. In this regard, tomorrow, the department will present the findings of a research report on the impact of the Grants. This report presents new evidence of the positive impact of the child support grant. It suggests that, in addition to the child support grant, government may need to consider appropriate support to pregnant women in order to improve the health of the mother and a child through nutritional and other forms of support.
This year we will work harder to ensure that children younger than 5 years, who access the child support grant also access Early Childhood Development (ECD) services and that older children are enrolled in Grade R and primary school.
Chairperson,
Early Childhood Development is important in terms of building cognitive skills of children, to improve their long-term health, productivity and their overall social wellbeing. Accordingly, the ECD programme remains a key priority for us. All provinces will equalise the ECD subsidy at R15 per child per day. Furthermore, we are working towards ensuring that ECD services, be it at home or at a centre, must be provided for a period of 264 days per year.
We will also increase the number of children accessing ECD centres across all provinces. In order to enrich the quality of ECD services, we will conduct a comprehensive audit of infrastructure and services at a cost of 24, 4 million Rand.
Honourable members,
Notwithstanding the comprehensive services we provide to children there are still too many orphaned and vulnerable children who live under conditions of hardship. We will expand the current services provided to them using the ‘Isibindi’ model. Under this programme, the child and youth care workers at provincial level will provide supervision, psychosocial support as well as community safe parks and life skills programmes. More than 1,3 million children will be targeted over the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), with a budget of 1,2 billion Rand to be allocated to provinces to cover the Isibindi, Early Childhood Development and Victim Empowerment programmes.
The future of any nation lies in the kind of investment it makes in the development of its youth. Given our youth demographics, we dare not ignore this section of our population. In this financial year we will initiate youth camps, which will bring adults and the youth together to promote information exchange in order to bridge the inter-generational divide.
In furtherance of the new National Strategic Plan on HIV and AIDS, STIs and TB, the department will, during this financial year, strive to reduce new HIV and AIDS infections through social and behavioural change programmes and build HIV and AIDS competent communities.
We need to acknowledge that much more needs to be done to empower vulnerable people and people with disabilities. In many spheres of life, for them their hopes and desires for inclusion remain but a distant dream. We have aligned our policy on disability with the United Nations Convention on disability which will enable us to ensure that the rights of people with disabilities are fully protected and promoted.
Our older persons are entitled to live in a safe and secure environment with due care and support. To improve services for senior citizens, the department has completed an audit of 58 high risk residential facilities for older persons in the Western Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. Audits will also be carried out in the remaining provinces. Provinces are expected to set aside funds to upgrade all high risk facilities.
Last October we supported a successful Older Persons Forum conference which resolved among others to establish provincial and local structures to promote participation by members in all matters that affect them. In celebration of our centenarians, and in pursuance of the outcomes of that conference, we will towards the end of this year, convene a senior citizens parliament in this parliamentary precinct.
Chairperson,
We are concerned about the negative impact of alcohol and substance abuse on individuals, families and communities. With this year’s allocation, we seek to intensify efforts to combat alcohol and substance abuse. This will include strengthening the Ke Moja campaign and a government wide programme of action to implement the outcomes of the second Biennial Anti-Substance Abuse Summit.
These efforts will be reinforced by the full implementation of the Prevention of and Treatment for Substance Abuse Act and new legislative initiatives in the marketing of alcohol, the raising of the age limit to purchase alcohol from age of 18 to 21 and other measures to limit access.
We salute the efforts of Mr Bongani Khathi of Pietermaritzburg, Mr Sifundo Languza of East London, Mr Vusi Zwane of Diepkloof, Soweto and Ms Dolana Dlamini of Pietermaritzburg who have transformed their shebeens into institutions of social change. Next month we will mark the International Day against drug abuse and illicit trafficking in Mpumalanga, to highlight the destructive impact of drugs on individuals, families and society as a whole.
Chairperson,
Access to social security is a human right. Towards the fulfilment of this right, we have worked to ensure that all those who are eligible for social grants, access them. In addition to the studies confirming the positive impact of social grants in reducing poverty and vulnerabilities, we will in November this year also release the results of the Social Budget exercise, which will explore the financing of our social assistance programme.
South Africa’s social assistance programme, with an allocation of 105 billion Rand in the 2012/13 financial year, projected to grow up to 122 billion Rand in the 2014/15 financial year, remains our government’s biggest poverty alleviation intervention. It is evident at this stage that the cost of social grants will decline significantly as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and should create additional fiscal space to expand the social security system.
In addition, we will also complete a study into the option of changing social grants into family benefits instead of individual benefits. Finally, government’s plan to publish proposals regarding a mandatory retirement system is imminent so as to address the shortcomings in the second pillar of our social security system.
Chairperson,
Good policies must be supported by effective systems, processes and capable people. Accordingly, we are happy to report that the administration and management of social grants has improved significantly, in particular over the last two years. The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) has introduced a range of service delivery improvement initiatives. These include amongst others:
- The re-registration and updating of all beneficiary information;
- Standardisation of business processes to achieve uniformity, and to reduce the grant approval time;
- Rolling out a new payment system that will result in an estimated R800 million saving in this financial year; and
- Five years from now, SASSA will take over full responsibility for the direct payment of social grants.
SASSA will also implement a re-registration programme on a biometric identification system as from 1 June to 31 December 2012 in order to verify the identity of beneficiaries. In this regard, we request the support of all members of this house.
SASSA staff will in future have to access the IT system processing grants through a biometric identification system to address leakages, fraud and corruption in our social security system. Already, our efforts are bearing fruit. In the Northern Cape, SASSA identified over 400 cases of fraudulent social grant beneficiaries. The suspension of these grants will save government about 30 million Rand.
Chairperson,
Large numbers of South Africans still experience extreme poverty and suffer from food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition. In December 2011, the department launched the Food for All Campaign, which seeks to promote household food security through appropriate income transfers, promoting household food production and food fortification programmes.
Chairperson, as part of our aims to foster partnerships between government and community organisations we initiated a campaign called “Taking Department of Social Development (DSD) to communities”. Under the banner of this campaign we are visiting many rural communities across the length and breadth of our country, conducting community dialogues to ascertain the developmental needs of these communities, and to form developmental partnerships between government and community based organisations.
Through this campaign, we will train 580 community development practitioners, train 300 community based organisations on community development and stimulate developmental initiatives in 100 communities in the 100 poorest wards of our country.
Taking Social Development to communities is essentially about social mobilisation. It is precisely for this reason that we have partnered with Soul City, Seriti Institute and the South African Broadcasting Corporation to launch a ten part series called Kwanda Talk in June this year.
Non-profit organisations, including faith based organisations, play a critical role in community development. In 2011, the department received more than 18 000 new applications for registration from community based organizations. This is an encouraging development. We have processed 94% of these applications within two months of submission.
The number of Non-profit organisations (NPOs) on the register stands at more than 85 000. The registration is important as it promotes effective, efficient and accountable management within the sector. In order to strengthen the capacity of NPOs, the department will continue to build their capacity and monitor their compliance to legislation.
Honourable Members,
The National Development Agency (NDA) will continue to drive development work in impoverished communities. To this end the Agency has budgeted 74.8 million Rand to implement projects in various communities, which include amongst others: 22 million Rand to strengthen ECD services, support food security at ECD sites, and building the leadership and management capacity of Non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
Ladies and gentlemen, all these efforts are at the heart of building a rights based society. Regrettably those efforts are being undermined by the insulting manner in which the dignity of persons, including one in the highest office, is being violated. As a society we cannot and should not tolerate racism even if it is disguised under the mantle of satire or art. We owe it to all those who fought for a non-racist and non-sexist future to fight against racism as much as we fight for freedom of expression.
We would like to thank the MECs present here, the Director-General, the Chief Executive Officer (CEOs) of SASSA and the NDA, Special Advisors and the entire staff of the Social Development family. The Deputy Minister and I urge the members of the NCOP to support Budget Vote 19.
Thank you!
