on delivering the Departmental Annual Report
27 November 2007
Introduction
Honourable Speaker
Honourable members of the legislature
Officials in the department
Whilst it may sound like routine to put to the house an annual report from
one year to the other, we from government do so not because we are just
following standard practice. We do so with the full knowledge that this is a
point in the year where government is called to report to the representative of
our people.
We are fully mindful that you the representative of our people await these
reports in order to assess whether what we have promised people in the name of
your government is indeed been done. So to us this is not merely routine, but a
critical moment where you are on behalf of our people determining whether their
government is worth the office they are occupying.
Speaker, in June this year we reported to the house how after the migration
of social grants to South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) we have mapped
the way forward for the department. We also reported to you what will
constitute our main focal points leading to the end of the term of office of
this government. Among them we isolated children as one of our focal points.
Being a province which is urban in the main, a province that intends to reach
an even higher growth of a city region, the welfare of children who may suffer
exclusion is a critical issue.
Children and families
The department has in the year under review, paid special attention to the
category of orphaned and vulnerable children. On the orphaned children we
continue to process applications for foster parents through the justice system
in even greater numbers. On average we complete about eight thousand cases a
year. We now have just over 36 000 foster parents in our system benefiting more
than 54 000 orphaned or abandoned children.
To those children infected and affected by HIV and AIDS we continue to
provide services to them in our community home based care sites. In these sites
we have care workers who see to it that those children who are on their own in
house holds are taken care of throughout the day. Those who are of the school
going age or attending crèche are assisted by these care workers on a daily
basis enabling them to start a day like any other child. They are assisted to
wash, put on clean clothes, eat and then taken to school or crèche.
Later in the day after school hours these children are taken care of in the
community home based care sites. There they have lunch, recreation and for
those who are at school they are assisted with homework. In the late afternoon
they are then provided with food packages for the evening. They are taken home
and prepared that they later can retire and sleep. During the course of this
year we were able to add 30 more sites to the already existing hundred sites.
We intend to roll out more for the next financial year.
Social infrastructure
We are on track in honouring our undertaking to erect Early Childhood
Development (ECD) facilities in the 20 townships. After a protracted struggle
to secure land, to conclude memorandums of understanding in the different
municipalities throughout the province, tenders have now being published by the
different municipalities and the department of public transport, roads and
works inviting interested parties to take up the building of these facilities.
We are planning for more of the same facilities for the next financial
year.
Older persons
The welfare of our senior citizens also enjoys our priority focus now and
into the immediate future. The legacy of apartheid and our focus in the past
ten years on the important issue of social security has meant a continued lack
of old age homes in black residential areas.
Government has accepted that none other than itself should take
responsibility in redressing this imbalance. In so doing we have undertaken as
a department to build one old age home in a given township every financial
year. It will take some time to even the disparity, but it is a beginning. We
have also undertaken to help renovate those few old age homes in the townships
that are in a bad physical state.
Having recognised that old age homes have a narrow reach to the multitudes
of elderly people out there, we are more and more gravitating towards a
community home based care approach. To this end we are on track in honouring
our undertaking of establishing daycare centres for the aged in townships.
Similarly with ECD sites we have secured land. Tender processes are underway to
find interested parties who will build the facilities.
Through these community facilities we hope that we will engage the elderly
in activities that give meaning to their lives. They will gather at will in
these facilities during day time to engage in different activities among
themselves.
Community development
Our eyes are still set on the developmental approach that says we must
empower communities to do it for themselves. On that score we are consciously
assisting people in township to establish, run and sustain own organisations to
run whatever community projects they choose.
We have established a unit whose main duty would be to monitor and help
capacitate people involved in the work of these organisations so that they
finally can manage the governance and administrative issues themselves.
Conclusion
In conclusion Mr Madam Speaker we are confident that these priority
programmes and the rest of the others that the department is undertaking will
go a long way in making a difference to the lives of our citizens who for
various reasons are unable to fend for themselves.
Issued by: Department of Social Development, Gauteng Provincial
Government
27 November 2007
