The Department of Social Development’s Project Mikondzo – a service delivery improvement initiative targeted at the poorest 1 300 wards in the country – has uncovered a number of service delivery shortcomings and social challenges in the community of De Doorns, Western Cape, including:
- Lack of Early Childhood Development (ECD) services;
- Limited social security services;
- Alcohol and substance abuse, including a prevalence of foetal alcohol syndrome;
- Unemployment;
- Teenage pregnancy; and
- Malnutrition.
This has prompted intervention by the Minister of Social Development, Ms Bathabile Dlamini, who met with the community of De Doorns during an Imbizo on October 12.
Minister Dlamini during the Imbizo unveiled a mobile ECD service and Library, operated by the National Development Agency (NDA), to help capacitate the existing ECD centres in the area. The NDA provides development grant funding to civil society organisations to implement integrated and sustainable community-driven programmes and contribute towards the eradication of poverty.
The Minister also announced that the Department will conduct a survey in the area to determine the number of children requiring ECD services in order that plans can be immediately put in place to meet their need for this service.
“We need to ensure that all children who need Early Childhood Development services, especially in the 0 – 4 age group, are given access to it. The NDA will further ensure that every ECD centre that operates in this area is properly registered and can provide services in terms of the norms and standards stipulated in the Children’s Act,” said Minister Dlamini.
De Doorns is mainly a farming area with seasonal employment. The farmers in the area reportedly employ only about 30 000 people on a permanent basis. Employment increases to about 70 000 during high season (September - April).
The Minister heard that some children in De Doorns attend ECD centres only during the part of the year when their parents are employed and thereafter pulled out because of their parents’ inability to pay for the service. It is also during the low season that other social challenges, such as malnutrition and alcohol and substance abuse emerge.
In order to ensure ECD attendance in all communities, government funds ECD centres at a rate of R15 per child per day. Fifty percent of the R15 per day per child is utilised for nutritional needs of the child, thirty percent contributes to the salaries of the ECD practitioners and support staff and twenty percent is utilised for stimulation material and administrative costs.
The Minister also announced during the Imbizo that all children in De Doorns attending the nine schools in the area will be supplied with school uniform starting in 2014. Few families in De Doorns currently can afford school uniforms because of the poverty that prevails in the community.
The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) will increase the frequency of its services in the area from once a week to twice a week and upscale the provision of social relief of distress in order to meet the need for social security interventions that exists, especially food security. De Doorns has one of the highest rates of malnutrition in the country.
Among other interventions to help deal with the social challenges faced by the community of De Doorns is the introduction of more social workers in the area. Currently, there are only six social workers servicing the area, all of them based in clinics.
As an intervention, the Department of Social Development has undertaken to deploy six more social workers from the national office into the area on a temporary basis until a longer term solution is found. The extra social workers will be based in SASSA offices.
The Imbizo in De Doorns was held as part of Social Development Month. Social Development Month takes place every year in October and aims to engage communities to identify their challenges and put together action plans to deal with these challenges.
The campaign, held in conjunction with the NDA and SASSA, also aims to inform communities of the various social security programmes available to them and how these can be accessed.
For media enquiries contact:
Lumka Oliphant
Cell: 083 484 8067
E-mail: lumkao@dsd.gov.za
