Following President Jacob Zuma's proclamation that issues of people with disabilities will henceforth reside with the Department of Social Development, the Minister of Social Development, Ms Bathabile Dlamini, has appointed a committee comprehensively to tackle the human rights challenges facing people with disabilities in the country. She made the announcement during her meeting with national organisations representing people with disabilities on July 17 in Cape Town.
The meeting was called to advance the new mandate given to the Department of Social Development to deal with matters of disability by engaging with the disability sector with the intention to identify challenges and opportunities towards building a consensus on national priority areas for action going forward. The meeting was also called to address the sector's rejection of the decision by the President to place their issues under Social Development and not their preferred department, the Presidency.
Tabling the Department's Budget Vote in Parliament on July 16, Minister Dlamini announced that the Department has declared 2014/15 the year of people with disabilities, in line with government's commitment to further consolidate the national disability agenda, under the theme: "Protecting and Promoting the human rights of people with disabilities: Towards full participation and inclusion."
The newly appointed committee is comprised of representatives from national organisations representing people with disabilities, Social Development officials, South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) officials, National Development Agency (NDA) officials and the South African National NGO Coalition (SANGOCO).
The committee has a mandate firstly to develop terms of reference as well as present a detailed and practical programme of action for advancing the national disability agenda in partnership with all relevant stakeholders and sectors.
This programme of action will then be presented to government through a "Disability Parliament" that Parliament will be requested to convene. It will be requested that the Disability Parliament becomes a standing item in Parliament's calendar of activities.
At the beginning of the meeting the disability sector raised a number of questions with Minister Dlamini, including clarity on the budget allocated to issues of disability, the methodology used to determine the disability grant and the number and kind of job opportunities reserved for people with disabilities within the Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP) Social Sector.
In order to work through some of these key issues, the meeting therefore agreed that Minister Dlamini would appoint a working committee. Over and above the stated questions, some of the other challenges the newly appointed committee will have to address - as raised during the meeting - are a lack of services to children and older persons with disabilities, the abuse of the adoption and fostering of children with disabilities, capacitating of social and health care workers to deal with disabilities issues, challenges facing employees with disabilities and the improvement of the grant payment biometric system to accommodate people with disabilities, among others.
Minister Dlamini committed to working with the disability sector to address the challenges raised, also pointing out that coordination and cooperation will be key. To this end she urged the sector to resuscitate dormant structures in order to improve the way government and the sector engage and work together. A declaration - the Declaration of Woodstock -was also signed acknowledging all the issues raised and committing all stakeholders to working together in resolving them.
Minister Dlamini also committed to integrating disability rights issues in the Department's Project Mikondzo - a service delivery improvement initiative aimed at finding and addressing service delivery short-comings as well as improve access to the department and its entities' (SASSA and NDA) services.
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Lumka Oliphant
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