9 March 2009
Introduction
Good morning ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of the Social Cluster Ministers
I would like to present some highlights of the achievements of the Cluster.
In presenting this report this morning, I will be focusing on the following
key areas as they relate to the Departments constituting the Social
Cluster.
* comprehensive social security
* promotion of national identity and social cohesion
* comprehensive healthcare
* housing and human settlements
* food security and nutrition
* access to and quality of education
* comprehensive anti-poverty interventions
Comprehensive Social Security
Social security plays a very critical role in the lives of millions of our
people given the twin challenges of poverty and underdevelopment that we are
still faced with.
On the issue of the implementation of a common tool to assess disabilities,
the implementation of this tool has been put on hold pending the amendment of
the Social Assistance Act in the 2009 Parliamentary cycle. In the meantime
though, the Department of Social Development has appointed a 40 member panel of
Tribunals to deal with appeals submitted for all grants. In addition, the South
African AIDS Council has been exploring the issue of a grant for chronic
diseases. Let me say that whilst the need for support for people with chronic
diseases is clear â as many people with chronic diseases are poor and that
having a chronic disease often pushes people further into poverty much more
work and further consultation is needed before a proposal can be tabled to
Cabinet.
Access to health services as well as affordability and equity between the
private and public health sectors are all matters that we are considering in
our discussion of the form and shape of a national health insurance system
(NHI). The Department of Health is currently preparing a discussion document on
determining the costed alternatives for a basic benefits package that could be
covered under the NHI, following the presentation to Cabinet in August last
year.
On our interventions to reach vulnerable children over the age of 14 years
and to increase the age of child support grant beneficiaries to 15 years,
Cabinet has approved the extension of the Child Support Grant from 14 to 18
years and implementation will be phased in during 2009/10 starting with 15 year
old children. The Department of Social Development has established an
Intersectoral Child Care and Protection Forum. One of whose functions is to
address the gaps in service delivery to children of all ages, including
children in the age cohort of 14 to 18 years.
As you may know, Government allocated R500 million towards the Social Relief
of Distress (SRD) grant in November last year. The monies paid out for the SRD
increased from R13,6 million in November 2008 to R57,2 million in January
2009.
The total number of beneficiaries for all types of grants is 12,6 million.
The total number of recipients per grant type is: Old Age grant â 2 344 595;
War Veterans grant â 1 611; Disability grant â 1 370 195; Foster Care grant â
474 012; Care Dependency grant â 106 073; Child Support grant â 8 523 741. Due
to the age extension from 14 to 15 years the number of children receiving
grants aged 14-15 years is 75 591. Since July 2008 the number of older men aged
63 and 64 years that are in receipt of the older persons grant is 72 635 as at
February 2009.
Promotion of national Identity and Social Cohesion
National identity and social cohesion constitute a crucial pillar of our
state.
A national conference with the theme âBuilding a caring nationâ which will
look amongst others into aspects of social cohesion and nation-building is
being planned for 2009. There are also plans to implement Social Mobilisation
Campaigns aimed at building solidarity, improve safety of communities and
strengthen social cohesion. This campaign will be piloted in KwaZulu-Natal and
will be launched during the planned national conference that I just referred
to.
Regarding the intensification of the installation of flags in schools and
other public buildings, we are happy to announce that the project is now in its
second phase. 2 000 flags were installed in all provinces in the first phase.
And a further 1 250 will be installed this year.
On the matter of a synchronised process to create a base slate to change
geographic and place names, public hearings were held in Mpumalanga and Eastern
Cape in October 2008. Other provincial hearings are planned for later this
year.
A revised draft version of the National Schools Pledge has been produced,
taking into account comments made during the process of public comment. The
revised draft Pledge will soon be presented to Cabinet for discussion and
approval.
In relation to developing a plan on the prevention of and treatment of
substance abuse (illegal drug use and alcohol abuse), the Prevention of and
Treatment for Substance Abuse Bill was presented to the National Council of
Provinces and to the Portfolio Committees of Health and Social Welfare in all
provinces. In addition, Substance Abuse Awareness Raising Campaign was
conducted through different forms of media.
On the issue of improving programmes aimed at rehabilitating communities in
line with Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recommendations, a Draft
Policy on Exhumations has been developed.
The Department of Sports and Recreation has engaged national sports
federations, including SA Rugby and the South African Football Association
(SAFA), regarding the use of the King Protea as the sole national sports
emblem. This was done with a view to unite South African sport behind one
emblem for all sports federations to contribute to nation building. Consensus
was also reached with SA Rugby regarding the use of the Springbok emblem.
The 2010 Mass Mobilisation campaign has been initiated to galvanise
communities around the hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. This programme is
complemented by the social legacy campaign that aims to increase the capacity
of local youth. This programme aims to use sport to improve the social
environment through the use of sport as a development tool.
The launch of the 2010 Mass Mobilisation road show took place on 27 January
2009 at Galeshewe Stadium in Kimberley. This launch was followed by road shows
in the Eastern Cape where two events were hosted at the Chris Hani District
Municipality and the Ukhahlamba District Municipality on 27 and 28 February
2009.
Comprehensive Healthcare
This component of our Programme of Action entails a number of critical
elements but in the interest of time we would like to focus on only a few of
these.
A task team has finalised a draft government-wide integrated comprehensive
programme on health promotion targeting the youth. This will be processed
through the Cluster system and taken to Cabinet for discussion and adoption so
that we have greater coherence across government of programmes that target the
health of our youth.
We are encouraged by the fact that all provinces have adopted the Healthy
Lifestyles initiative. Peer educators are working under supervision of
professional nurses to ensure that all public health facilities are Youth
Friendly.
Regarding the expanding the number of health promoting schools from 3 500 to
5 000, by the end of this financial year there will be 4100 health promoting
schools. In addition, all our schools are now implementing tobacco control
policies within the context of national legislation geared at curbing tobacco
use especially amongst the youth.
With respect to progress in strengthening our interventions on
non-communicable diseases I can report that the implementation framework for
the long-term care service model for people with non-communicable diseases is
targeted for publication in the 2009/10 financial year and the Diabetes
Declaration implementation plan will be used by nine of the 18 priority health
districts during 2009/10 to strengthen the management of diabetes.
HIV and AIDS continue to be amongst the biggest public health challenge
facing us. Among our targets is to increase the percentage of adults who have
ever had an HIV test from 25% to 35%. To expand access to voluntary counselling
and testing 93% of our primary health facilities provide counselling and
testing. However, we wish to encourage everyone to âknow your statusâ. This
will contribute to risk avoidance as well as improving treatment seeking
behaviour. The number of people tested for HIV (excluding pregnant women) is 2
430 300.
In terms of people on treatment (antiretroviral - ARV programme), more than
690 775 patients have been initiated on ARVs since the commencement of the
programme. The Free State province has been in the news recently with respect
to their inability to fully fund their ARV programme. We have been working with
the province with assistance from our development partners to find ways to
ensure that the programme is not interrupted.
Prevention of HIV, especially amongst the youth, is very important to
decrease the incidence of HIV in South Africa. In one programme that focuses on
the youth, 1 630 young men and women were trained as âgroundbreakersâ or
peer role models for the youth. This is an example of collaboration between
government and civil society â in this instance the Sports and Recreation South
Africa and loveLife.
Tuberculosis (TB) remains another public health challenge and this has
further been complicated by drug-resistant TB. In terms of reducing the
defaulter, we are encouraged by the fact that we been able to decrease our
defaulter rate from 10% to 7.9%. In addition our TB cure rates have increased
from just over 50% to over 60%.
A total of 844 health workers have been trained on Drug Resistant TB
Management infection control, 567 on electronic TB register and data management
and 4279 have been trained on TB management, leading to a total 6441 health
personnel trained to help us manage TB in our country.
Since November last year we have seen a significant increase in the number
of cholera cases especially in Limpopo and Mpumalanga. Through collaboration
across national government departments and working closely with our provincial
counterparts we have managed to limit the number of fatalities as well as
gradually decrease the number of new cases in both provinces.
Housing and Human Settlement
Despite the many challenges that we continue to experience in this area, we
are encouraged by the strong collaboration that we see between government and
our financial institutions. As far as the monitoring of the use of the R42
billion committed by Financial Institutions, to date, over R40,5 billion has
been released for financing housing development and/or ownership.
We are also encouraged by the work being done around the transformation of
the NHFC and the increase in lending to lower income groups. The final steps in
the transformation of this body (NHFC) are being implemented within the context
of a government-wide review of the Development Finance Institutions.
On the introduction of measures to ensure affordable and sustainable home
ownership, well over 100 000 units are planned in mixed income and multiple use
projects. The subsidy voucher system design for building materials in rural
areas to support the self-build initiative is complete pending policy decision
and is due for implementation this year.
The housing delivery programme for 2008/09 has yielded over 133 000 units of
the planned 265 000 units to house occupants of informal settlements and
backyard dwellers.
Just over 3 million housing subsidies were approved and just over 2 million
units have been completed. This brought homes to 9.9 million citizens.
As most of us would know, sanitation is another critical element is far as
housing and human settlement is concerned. A total of 906 bucket sanitation
units were removed, reducing the backlog to 10 395 at the end of December 2008.
The water delivery target for 2008/09 is 450 000 households and by December
last year a total of 771 884 households were serviced.
During the current term of government we have provided additional 1.465m
households with basic access to water supply thus increasing access from 80% to
91% measured against the 2004 base. With regard to sanitation we can report
that and additional 1.16m households were served with basic sanitation thereby
increasing access from 66% to 74% measured against the 2004 benchmark.
We have also increased the number of electricity connections to households
within the same period by an additional 727 777 connections. There are
currently 6.7 million households are currently receiving have their refuse
removed once a week throughout the country.
The schools programme has served 51 schools with water facilities and 125
with sanitation in the last financial year. Though implementation was slow
initially, progress has improved and the remaining 3 035 schools are to have
been addressed by December 2010. This will mean that all schools in this
country will have basic access to water and sanitation.
Whilst acknowledging the significant progress we have made with regard to
the provision of basic access to water and sanitation, electricity, collection
of refuse from households; government is still concerned about the number of
households who still do not have access to these basic services and Cabinet
decided in January 2008 to integrate all the targets and work towards Universal
access by 2014.
Government is fully committed to the 2014 universal access target and as the
social cluster we are working across departments and other spheres of towards
the achievement of this target. Some departments, like the Department of Water
Affairs and Forestry (DWAF), have decided to allocate an additional budget to
the current Municipal Infrastructure Grant and the Bulk Infrastructure Grant.
DWAF will be providing an additional R500m in 2009/10 in order to deal with
some of the immediate challenges we face in the provision of water and
sanitation.
Food Security and Nutrition
This is one of the critical areas of our work as the Cluster and a number of
interventions have been introduced to strengthen food security. With the
exception of the North West, all provinces have launched the Ilima-Letsema
programme. This programme distributes agricultural starter-packs to poor
households and support small scale farmers.
The household food production programme which provides seedlings, seeds,
fertiliser, pesticides and other production inputs to beneficiaries has
benefited about 30 000 households this year. In the 2008 supplementary
budget the household food production programme was expanded by an additional
R76 million which will assist us in reaching the targeted 70 000
households.
At the school level, 6 503 schools in our country have vegetable gardens. We
have also trained school communities on tree planting as well as planting fruit
trees in schools as part of âPlant Million Trees Campaignâ.
The National School Nutrition Programme supports about 5,6 million learners
in approximately 18 000 schools. The minimum norm is to feed learners in
quintiles 1, 2 and 3 on all school days at an average cost of R1,50 per learner
per day. This programme has received an additional R4 billion for the new
financial year to enhance sustainability of the programme.
The issue of high food prices has been discussed and addressed at the
Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC). To further probe for workable solutions in
this regard, the IMC held a symposium on High Food Price to open dialogue with
all industry players and consumer representatives to develop common strategies
that will address this issue.
Access to and quality of education
Access to quality education and training remain the key drivers of our
economy and skills. As a cluster, we have increases the allocation of resources
to provide financial assistance to trainees in further education and training
(FET) colleges to help us expand the availability of scarce skills.
560 298 learners wrote the first National Senior Certificate
examinations in 2008 with a 62,5% pass rate nationally.
Mathematics is one subject that we identified as being key to achieving some
of the goals we have set ourselves and you will recall that we committed
ourselves to doubling the number of matric maths passes to 50 000 by 2009. A
total of 63 038 learners passed mathematics at a higher grade level in 2008. A
total of 15 038 passes were learners from our Dinaledi schools. This therefore
indicates that the Dinaledi schools contributed 24% of the high level passes in
mathematics in 2008.
In line with our campaign to improve literacy, the Kha Ri Gude campaign was
officially launched in April last year and the current rate of participation
indicates that the campaign will reach 100% of its learner targets.
We are also continuing to work closely with universities to double the
output of universities in priority sectors by aligning the NSFAS and subsidy
funding with scarce skills. To this effect, the Department of Education has
allocated R439 million to improve facilities at disadvantaged institutions for
the support of key skills areas including the faculties of engineering and
technology.
We are aware that fees in our schools continue to be a challenge. We have
committed ourselves to eliminating compulsory school fees in 60% of primary and
secondary schools. As of January this year, 60% of learners are attending
no-fee schools.
In order to popularise and implement measures for the prevention and
management of Learner Pregnancy, tools for the Prevention and Management of
Learner Pregnancy have been made available to all public schools. In September
and October 2008, the first two of a three series insert to the Teacher
newspaper called Genderations were published. Genderations focuses on providing
support to teachers in managing and preventing learner pregnancy.
To popularise and implement Guidelines on Sexual Harassment and violence in
Public Schools, the Guidelines for the Prevention and Management of Sexual
Violence and harassment in public schools have been finalised and printed, and
are currently being distributed to schools.
Comprehensive anti-poverty interventions
Poverty remains one of the key challenges facing our people. It undermines
our democracy. As a Government therefore, we have in place a number of
interventions geared at minimising its impact on our people. By the end of
2008, government had formulated a draft anti-poverty strategy and a national
plan to implement this strategy as part of fast tracking our efforts to lift
more people out of poverty.
A draft poverty matrix has been drafted through the identification of key
projects in the social and economic clusters. This matrix will be completed
once the development of the national database of households living in poverty
has been completed.
A âCredible Indigent Policy Assessment Frameworkâ has been developed and is
being used by the Department of Provincial and Local Government to assess the
credibility of municipal indigent policies and registers. By the end of this
month, we will have completed the Indigent Policy and Register Assessment
workshops in all 39 targeted municipalities to help accelerate household
targeting and indigent support initiatives.
In linking up 10 000 unemployed graduates with economic opportunities, 1 050
unemployed graduates trained through the Graduate Development Programme. A
total of 447 unemployed youth were placed in employment opportunities through
the JOBS Programme. In order to Intensify the National Youth Service Programme,
since Jan 2008 12,785 unemployed and unskilled young people participate in NYS
Category 1 projects.
On the issue of expand the reach of enterprise development initiatives such
as business support and microfinance services resulting in sustainable economic
opportunities for about 65 000 youth.
In relation to expanding access to Early Childhood Development (ECD) by
doubling the number of children enrolled in Early Childhood Development to over
600 000 through 1 000 new sites with more than 3 500 practitioners trained and
employed, and increasing the number of care-givers. For the period April to
September 2008 nationally 595 new ECD sites have been registered bringing 32
185 new children into the system.
With regard to Implementing the Rural Transport Strategy for South Africa by
establishing an Integrated Rural Transport Development Programme (RTDP) in six
rural districts, Rural Transport Services and Infrastructure Grant Framework
for Rural District Municipalities has been finalised with National Treasury. An
amount of R8,9 million has been transferred to the relevant municipalities to
implement the projects indicated on the Special Project Box. Out of 26 100
Shova Kalula Bicycles earmarked for distribution for 2008/09, 19 109 have been
distributed to provinces.
Conclusion
Generally, the Cluster is encouraged by the progress made in the
implementation of governmentâs PoA.
Despite this progress though, we are mindful of the many shortcomings that
we continue to experience, some of them have to do with resources (financial
and human) and others that relate to system challenges.
Minister Barbara Hogan, MP
Minister of Health and Co-Chair of the Social Sector Cluster
Issued by: Department of Health
9 March 2009
