Honourable Chairperson,
Honourable Deputy Minister,
MECs of Social Development here present,
Members of the Provincial Executive Councils,
Distinguished guests,
Representatives of development agencies and civil society,
Comrades and friends,
Ladies and gentlemen
Chairperson, before getting into the substance of this budget vote speech, I would like to take this opportunity to thank our predecessors, Dr Zola Skweyiya and Dr Jean Swanson-Jacobs for the able manner in which they led this portfolio. Social Development is tasked with tackling daily challenges afflicting our society's most poor and vulnerable people. Chairperson, South Africa's poor, like their counterparts in most parts of the world, face additional challenges due to the global financial crisis, which has become a humanitarian crisis.
During the last few months hundreds of thousands of jobs have vanished, houses and other properties have been lost, and as a result the living conditions of the poor have worsened. Because of these additional challenges, we need to deepen our responses, while staying the course of reaching for the goal of creating an inclusive and caring society. As stated by the President in his State of the Nation address, "we shall not rest, we dare not falter in our drive to eradicate poverty."
Before elaborating on our responses to the current humanitarian crises, and providing details of our programmatic intervention, I wish to reaffirm the need for the social sector, that is, the national and provincial departments, our public entities and civil society to work in partnership.
Chairperson, last week I met with MECs responsible for Social Development. We assessed the progress made and appreciated the tasks that lie ahead. Collectively, we agreed that we need to work harder and together to fulfil the hopes and ambitions of all South Africans. Social Development is a concurrent function performed by the national and provincial departments.
The national department, in line with its Constitutional mandate, provides policy direction and oversight for service delivery. Provincial departments are responsible for service delivery, mainly in partnership with civil society organizations. It is the policy of my Department to ensure that we lend support to our provincial counterparts in improving service delivery. This commitment can be seen in the increase in expenditure on a number of new policy initiatives that speaks to our goal of creating a caring society.
Our close cooperation with the provinces in the last few years has seen marked improvements in the quality of provision of developmental welfare services. We will continue to accelerate the implementation of key pieces of legislation such as the Children's Act, the Older Person's Act, and the Prevention of and Treatment of Substance Act.
Chairperson, the impact of the financial crises has been deeper than expected, devastating to many and destructive in its severity for those on the margin. We will rally to the call of the President and we will be un-relentless in our response. Drawing on the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) framework agreement response to the financial crisis, Social Development is rolling out a package of interventions. We increased the age of eligibility for the child support grant to children up to fifteen years in January this year. 70 000 men have benefited from the old age pension when we continued with equalising access to the grant by lowering the age of eligibility for men to 61 years. The provision of Social Relief of Distress was increased five fold.
Over the medium term we will gradually extend the Child Support Grant to children up to 18 years. Chairperson, our recent success in responding to the humanitarian crises, and the progress we have made in respect of the social assistance programme is in no small measure due to the commitment of the provincial departments of Social Development.
Over 13 million South Africans now receive social assistance benefits. Of these beneficiaries, nine million are children. While concerns remain about the affordability and sustainability of the programme, it is without doubt government's most effective poverty alleviation intervention. As from April this year, the values of grants were increased to ameliorate the impact of inflation. The old age grant and disability grants were increased from R960 to R1 010; the child support grant from R230 to R240; the foster care grant increased from R650 to R680 and the care dependency grant from R960 to R1 010. In order to intensify the fight against child poverty, we will register an additional 20 000 children under 15 years by the end of August 2009. We will soon table a plan for the phased extension to 18 years of the Child Support Grant to be implemented over the current Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) cycle.
Chairperson, in response to rising food prices last year and the concomitant adverse economic circumstances our people face, we have increased the social relief budget from R124 million to R624 million. The rapid distribution of the additional allocation bears testimony to the positive co-operation between the National and provincial departments of Social Development. The R624 million enabled us to reach 765 347 people through cash and in-kind benefits, particularly those not covered by social assistance grants.
From November 2008 to April this year, 568 909 food parcels and vouchers were issued, 128 746 school uniforms were issued, 35 679 cash payments were made while 32 013 individuals received other forms of assistance in the form of blankets. We will seek to augment our resources and enhance our abilities to reach people who suffer undue hardship. In partnership with the provincial departments of Social Development, we will explore working with faith based organisations (FBOs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), all in good standing, to assist in the distribution of Social Relief. The administration of Social Relief will be delegated to provincial Departments of Social Development, which will oversee and support these civil society organisations.
Chairperson, with respect to improving the livelihoods of poor people, my department will invest in and support community based organisations and institutions that work towards the overall wellbeing of our people. This includes supporting Community Foundations and organisations involved in advocating for women's rights, safety and inclusion in the economic activities of our country.
The Department is also working with the Community Food Bank Network of South Africa and the Global Food Banking Network to pilot the food bank concept. Four community food banks in Durban, Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg and one rural village in UMkhanyakude District were supported through this initiative. I welcome the private sector’s contribution to complement efforts towards the War on Poverty and appeal to other sectors of our society to partner with us on this campaign.
Chairperson, clearly the anti-poverty strategy and campaign are part of government's overall attempts to improve the livelihood capabilities of our people. Here too, my department has specific contributions to make. Our task in this respect is to collect information on the needs of households and communities in 150 wards. This we will do in partnership with provincial Departments of Social development, relevant civil society organisations and the Independent Development Trust (IDT).
The Expanded Public Works Programme too, is important to our efforts to create job opportunities for the poor. My department will continue to provide training to an additional 1 5000 community caregivers and over 25 000 ECD practitioners.
Chairperson, the issue of Early Childhood Development may be one of this Department’s most important contributions to the challenge of promoting sustainable livelihoods and reducing intergenerational poverty over time. Early Childhood Development is indeed part of government's long-term goal of investing in human capital which is pivotal to any society’s efforts to beat systemic poverty. We will accelerate the registration of ECD sites from the current 13 743 to 14 401 and increase the number of children in registered ECD centres to 758 000. These goals are informed by the ideal that, everyone counts, everyone has a purpose in life, and yes, everyone is significant!
Chairperson, we need to pay attention to developing our youth. The most critical aspect of our work with young people is to empower them and instil the spirit of patriotism and active citizenry. It is for this reason that we launched the Masupatsela Youth Pioneer Programme as part of our broad National Youth Service Programme. To date, 2 114 youth pioneers were recruited into the programme while over 1750 of them took part in the War on Poverty initiatives throughout the country. We will support provinces in the creation of programmes and directorates that are specifically dedicated to youth issues and ensure that their concerns are treated with the attention they deserve.
Chairperson, we are embarking on strategies to improve our institutional capabilities to better respond to, and protect the poor from the adverse effects of poverty. This includes improving South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) as key service delivery institution. A thorough Business Process Re-engineering initiative will be implemented that will among other things; improve the turnaround time for processing grant applications.
We are working with the Post Office on measures to reduce the cost of grant payments and improve accessibility. Within the next ten years no beneficiary should be paid under the harsh conditions existing at the pay points. We will continue the work done by SASSA and the Special Investigations Unit to fight against fraud and corruption in the grants administration system. Aside from continuing to bring to book civil servants who were found to have defrauded the grant system, we will also investigate individuals in private sector who are defrauding the grant system for their own benefit.
Chairperson, in keeping with our Constitutional obligations we have initiated a process of dealing with appeals against potential wrongful decisions by SASSA. I have appointed a tribunal to enhance administrative justice to ensue fairness in social security administration. To this extent the tribunal has successfully considered 20 000 appeals and those adversely affected will no be paid the grants for which they rightly qualify.
With regards to improving Human Resources in the Social Sector, we have given bursaries to over 6420 students to register for courses in social work at several institutions for higher learning. We have increased the allocation for social work bursaries to R210 million during the current financial year.
The recruitment of social workers will proceed alongside the implementation of the Occupation Specific Dispensation (OSD) for social service professions and occupations. This will ensure that we attract the country’s brightest minds to the profession. We will also continue with the implementation of the recruitment and retention strategy for social workers and continue with the professionalisation of associated social service professions.
Honourable members, I am pleased to note that the National Development Agency (NDA), which is another pillar in our fight against poverty, is in a better position to fund poverty alleviation and community development projects. To date the NDA has benefited about 230 thousand people. During the current MTEF period, the Agency will play a critical role in supporting the Department’s overall development goals, including the implementation of the country’s comprehensive anti-poverty strategy.
Chairperson, policies and legislation are as good as the dedication of people implementing them. As such, during the current MTEF period, we will intensify and extend our initiatives to provide training to all officials so that they are aware of treating the people whom we provide services to with dignity and respect. In partnership with our provincial counterparts we will work to improve our offices and other service delivery infrastructure so as to further improve our approaches to customer care.
Chairperson, we will continue to consolidate and deepen our commitment to regional integration, and the creation of a better Africa through our participation in multilateral organisations, and still pursue our agreements with Mexico, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We will play a constructive in implementing the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC's) Population and Development Plan of Action. On 17 July 2009, we will be hosting the meeting of the SADC Ministers' to review implementation of the International Conference on Population and Development that was held in Cairo fifteen years ago.
A ten-year review of our country's population policy indicates that we have made commendable progress in the areas of sexual and reproductive health, and a significant reduction in infant mortality.
Chairperson let me conclude by extending my appreciation to the Director-General, the Heads of Social Development, the CEOs of the public entities and all staff for their support.
I look forward to working with the Deputy Minister, the MECs of Social Development, Parliamentary Committees and all the partners in the social development sector. Working together, we can do more.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Social Development
8 July 2009
Source: Department of Social Development (http://www.dsd.gov.za)
