FREE DAILY EMAIL

The government wants to put in place comprehensive social security, and will not focus solely on a basic income grant (BIG) as critics suggest it should, social development minister Zola Skweyiya said on Wednesday.

"It's unfortunate that this important matter initiated by the government is being reduced to one aspect; the basic income grant," he said at media briefing in Parliament.

"The government is looking at a more comprehensive solution to the problems confronting the poorest of the poor."
The programme included welfare grants, as well as health, road accident and unemployment insurance.

"The Job Summit (of 1998) demanded a comprehensive social security system, not just a basic income grant," Skweyiya said.

The Democratic Alliance, as well as the Congress of SA Trade Unions, church groups and civil society organisations have petitioned government to introduce a grant for all South Africans, in an effort to fight poverty.

Skweyiya said the age limit for the child support grant would be increased from seven to 14, over the next three years, and at a cost of about R5-billion.

His department would during the 2003/04 financial year work closely with the department of education to register children aged seven and eight.

By the end of the following year, those aged between nine and 11 would be registered and in 2005/06 the objective would be to register all 12 and 13 year-olds.

This would mean that all children turning seven in the coming year were kept in the system until they turned 14.

It was not possible, due to capacity constraints, to raise the age limit immediately.

He said currently more than 2,7-million children under seven years were registered and between 500000 and one million were still to be put onto the books.

A further 3,2-million children were expected to be registered under the expansion programme.

The minister also said government would from next month be targeting more than 200000 households, earning less than R200 a month, for food parcels.

He said R230-million had been set aside for the programme from an allocation of R400-million announced in October last year to help fight high food costs.

DA social development spokesman Nick Clelland-Stokes, however, said the hopes raised by President Thabo Mbeki's announcement in his state of the nation speech of expanded grants had been dashed on Wednesday.

"The perceptions flowing from the president's sweeping announcement at the opening of Parliament contrasted with the announcements made today and will generate great confusion, frustration and despair for those desperately in need."
Government should immediately raise the age limit to school-leaving age and should introduce a basic income grant to assist poor South Africans ineligible for social assistance.

"For the minister of social development to denounce a BIG in favour of a so-called comprehensive social security system is nothing more than hocus-pocus.

"The BIG is the only way to close this country's huge poverty gap," he said -Sapa.

SPONSORED BY

Advanced