Programme director
MEC’s present here
Capricorn District Mayor
Executive Mayor of Polokwane
Traditional leaders
Faith based missions
Children of our province
Ladies and gentlemen
It is with utmost honour and privilege to meet here in this important occasion of celebrating Children’s Day. We are here to celebrate those amongst us who represent both the present and the future. It is always important to bear in mind that children play a crucial role in the life of humanity and the long sustainability of every nation.
It is indeed a great privilege to address this august gathering to mark the National Children’s Day event which is celebrated each year on a first Saturday of November. It is during this period that government shows it’s unswerving commitment to the promotion, protection and equalisation of opportunities for children in this province.
This year’s celebration is aligned to a call for the strengthening of the efforts in ensuring child survival through intensive measures. We are celebrating this year’s event under the theme: “Act for the survival of all children: towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)".
The National Children’s Day must be conducted in a form that affords children the opportunity to articulate the role played by government on achieving the Millennium Development Goals. As a province and the country at large we need to fight and eradicate extreme poverty and hunger amongst people; achieve all universal primary targets; promote gender equality and empower girls; reduce child mortality; combat HIV and AIDS, ensure environmental sustainability for the future and most fundamentally ensure that children acquire education.
This celebration is in pursuance to the provincial government aspirations of realising safe and secure communities in Limpopo, where everybody, including children will walk freely on the streets without any fear of harm.
We are committed to the course of realising the objectives of the African National Congress of ensuring that we prioritise the welfare of children which include developing, monitoring and measuring tools that define and deal with child poverty; strengthening the current safety nets that deal with child protection, ongoing murders, disappearances, abuse and negligence which continue to torment many children. We have to give the best interests of children the utmost priority.
Again in outlining the programme of action of government in the State of the Province Address this year, we emphasised the need “to integrate gender equity measures into the government’s programme of action and ensure that women, children and persons with disabilities have access to developmental opportunities.”
It is important to outline this mandate in order to appropriately locate and respond to the varying expectations with regard to the work of government departments which emerged in our consultation with stakeholders in the three sectors; that are women, children and persons with disabilities.
To actualise our mandate which originate from the resolution of the Polokwane conference of the ANC, we have over the past months focused on building systems and processes that will enable the department responsible for Women, Children and people with disabilities to effectively carry out its mandate. As government, we have gone a long way in promoting, protecting and equalising opportunities for children in the province.
Section 28 of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution encapsulates the aspirations of child protection and development. We are hard at work ensuring the realisation of this provision of our Constitution by focusing not only on service provision, but also on mainstreaming of children’s rights issues in governance processes and monitoring of delivery on the constitutional, continental and international obligations on children’s rights.
Programme director,
We are registering a remarkable progress in opening the doors of learning and teaching in the province and it is worth to note that we have already exceeded the target set by the Millennium Development Goals in this regard. We view education as an important tool that must be used to determine and shape the bright future of the nation, especially the young generation.
We have recently adopted an Early Childhood Development Strategy for the province; this strategy will enhance government’s effort to develop a child support programme in a manner that is integrated, monitored, coordinated and evaluated. We must enhance our capacity to respond to the challenges brought by many children from our sister country Zimbabwe who have come to South Africa to search for a better life. According to the dictates of international law no children should live without shelter, food, clothes, access to education and proper parental guardianship. As government and most importantly as individuals we should assist children who have no shelter, food, clothes and other essential services. Presently our social grants programme is benefiting over 1,6 million children through the child support and foster care grants.
Though the programme of child support grants is aimed at benefiting children, some people have resorted to abuse the system defeating the primary objective of fighting poverty. The grant which is supposed to be used to look after the welfare of children is normally misdirected to address other needs, which in most instances have nothing to do with the principal mandate.
As government we are urging communities to report this kind of abusive tendencies through government hotlines and other law enforcement agencies. We must not allow these challenges to limit our ability to improve the lives of vulnerable individuals in our society. We are forging partnerships with various players to make a difference in the lives of our people. Today, we will be launching a Victim Empowerment Centre in partnership with Moletjie Traditional Authority and Moletjie FM.
We are appealing to the private sector to make available budgets for projects that support socio-economic development of the vulnerable groups in our society. This contribution should support government social programmes and make a lasting difference in improving the lives of marginalised vulnerable children including children with disabilities.
Programme director,
Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to thank many individuals and organisations which have contributed to the success of this initiative, particularly the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime for their active participation in ensuring that we improve the standards of living of our people, especially children. We want to take this opportunity to call upon other corporate business to join this process and help children.
Your contributions in this respect will prove to be invaluable to the process of the creation of a truly people cantered society.
Let us roll our sleeves and get down to work with full determination to build a caring province which is based on our principles of ubuntu and love.
Working together, we can do more!
Thank you!
Source: Limpopo Provincial Government
