15 February 2007
Theme: Second Economy interventions and poverty alleviation
Chair: the Minister of Social Development, Dr Zola Skweyiya
Ladies and gentlemen,
Welcome to the Social Cluster 2 briefing session which focuses on poverty
alleviation and second economy interventions.
As outlined in the State of the Nation Address, the cluster programme will
be underlined by the intensification of the fight against poverty, with an
added emphasis on improving the ability of the poor to access government
services.
1. Comprehensive social security
We will conduct extensive work on social security reform, especially to
develop Pillar 2, the non-contributory or social insurance pillar.
The expectations are that those who are employed should save part of their
income, and contribute to social solidarity measures to protect themselves and
their families from unemployment, illness, disability or old age. Government
must set up this arrangement to act as underwriter as individuals and society
often bear the risks of failures.
We will conduct further work on Pillar 3, to improve the governance of private
providers. The pillar entails social security benefits that are more
discretionary in nature. Our intentions will be to help prevent failures of
fund managers, unfair practices, high costs of products and corruption.
We will implement a number of projects to improve the integrity of the social
grants administration system, as well as its management, accountability and
effectiveness. This will include amongst other measures, ensuring that
temporary disability grants are lapsed when due, improved compliance is ensured
by application of means tests, that foster care grants are reviewed and that
fraud is prevented, detected and acted upon.
There is continuous progress on the anti-fraud campaign. Since the inception of
the investigation of more than 500 000 grants held by non-public servants late
last year, more than 200 000 grants have either been cancelled or lapsed due to
non-collection.
In addition, the Special Investigating Unit has identified more than 10 000
cases for prosecution and civil recovery, and more than 60 000 child support
grants in this category are to be suspended.
Action against public servants will continue. Close to six thousand have
started paying back R5 million that they owe as proceeds of crime, and 2 000
are to face disciplinary action, while investigations and prosecutions are
ongoing against others.
2. Integrated food security and land reform
The President noted the need to put in extra effort in dealing with
remaining land restitution cases, many of which are much more complex. In this
regard, we will seek to finalise outstanding rural land claims. Most of the
urban claimants have opted for financial compensation, to the value of R3.8
billion. We are now left with about six thousand rural land claims, which we
must settle by the year 2008.
These outstanding claims include those in forestry, conservation, land with
mining rights as well as large sugar and tea estates.
Various mechanisms have been put in place to speed up land redistribution. We
will continue the implementation of the Pro-active Land Acquisition Strategy to
acquire the 30% of agricultural and other land for the reform programme.
Negotiations will be conducted in cases where there are disputes with
landowners with regard to issues of validity of claims or value of land. The
negotiations period will be shortened to six months, where-after expropriation
or referral to the Land Claims Court will be considered.
We will continue working on the Expropriation Amendment Bill aimed at
addressing issues of expropriation procedure and compensation.
On food security, the Agricultural Starter Pack Programme, aimed at moving
people out of the Food Parcel Scheme by growing own food, is also to be
continued.
A total of 66 364 beneficiaries have been reached through the programme in all
provinces. Also continuing is the provision of financing for emerging farmers.
To date, loans of up to R24.4 million have been disbursed to 848 successful
applicants.
The AgriBEE Charter is to be gazetted soon. A Baseline Study has been
commissioned to provide empirical data for targets, weightings and indicators.
The study will be concluded in May 2007.
3. Second Economy interventions: Social aspects of the Expanded Public Works
Programme (EPWP)
There are a number of initiatives underway to ensure that the outputs of the
EPWP are increased so that the impact of the programme is enhanced, as per the
Presidentâs directive in the State of the Nation address.
There are increased allocations of R3 billion over the Medium Term Expenditure
Framework to provincial roads departments through the Provincial Infrastructure
Grant. The objective is to increase their labour-intensive construction and
maintenance activities. These activities will focus on the access roads in the
provinces as this category of roads is currently under-funded, and is amenable
to the use of labour-intensive maintenance and construction activities.
All provinces have developed business plans for the next three years for this
scaling up and are ready to commence implementation in the new financial
year.
The Department of Public Works in partnership with the Business Trust Expanded
Public Works Support Programme are rolling out a comprehensive technical
support strategy to assist 45 key municipalities with the implementation of the
EPWP.
The EPWP will also focus on the rollout of Early Childhood Development (ECD)
and Home Based Care programmes. Total allocations of R4.2 billion are available
for these programmes to the provincial departments. These programmes do not
only focus on providing work opportunities for volunteers in the sector, but
also on providing skills training to further formalise care in the
sector. The ECD programme is also a child protection mechanism as it is easy to
detect abuse amongst children attending ECD centres.
We have developed a methodology to increase the size of the EPWP projects. This
will increase the impact by lengthening the duration of employment and well as
enabling longer periods for training to be provided to EPWP beneficiaries. This
methodology is being tested in eThekwini on some of the large-scale projects
being undertaken there.
We have identified projects in the Free State, Western Cape, Limpopo,
KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng where youth will be employed in the maintenance and
rehabilitation of public buildings. Further work will be done to identify the
next batch of projects to ensure that the target of 5 000 youth as set by the
President is met.
Furthermore, all provincial Public works departments are to engage 5 000 youths
each in the maintenance of the assets they are responsible for. All the
provinces are currently finalising the identification of the projects that will
be made part of the National Youth Service in the coming financial year.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Social Development
15 February 2007
