at the Senior Citizens Centenary event at the Turffontein Racecourse
29 September 2006
To the esteemed senior citizens,
The Head of Department (HOD),
Officials of the department,
Ladies and gentlemen,
We are honoured to host you as our guests for today and we want to celebrate
this great achievement with yourselves. We also want to learn from the wisdom
that has been tested for so many decades of your lives. We hope to learn from
you and perhaps we will also live to see a hundred years, as you have done.
We hope that all of us will take the valuable insight, which contributed to
your many years of life, and use it to transform our province and country, for
a better life for our people. We also hope that through your strength and
blessings as our living ancestors, we will work hard to reduce:
* senior citizen abuse
* extend home-based care services to other senior citizens
* assist the poor and vulnerable alleviate their plight
* fight women abuse
* reduce teenage pregnancy
* fight against alcohol drugs and substance abuse
* reduce the number of children in conflict with the law
* educate the children through the Expansion of Early Childhood
Development
* provide basic food security for the poor and the marginalised.
It is our desire and intention to ensure that all our programmes at the
Gauteng Social Development department succeed. And this will happen through the
appropriate implementation of the Gauteng Social Development Strategy, which we
will unveil in October, our Social Development Month.
We will also host a summit, which will look at our programmes and how we put
them in the communities where they are most needed. The summit will also look
at strengthening partnerships with our communities and partners. It will also
look at how we strengthen our relations with business to increase funding
avenues for our programmes. All this will happen during October Social
Development Month. These are the highlights of the entire October month
programme.
On that note, I thank you
Issued by: Department of Social Development, Gauteng Provincial
Government
29 September 2006
