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DA: Bridget Masango: Address by DA Shadow Minister of Social Development, on the Social Development Budget Vote, Parliament (04/05/2016)

DA: Bridget Masango: Address by DA Shadow Minister of Social Development, on the Social Development Budget Vote, Parliament (04/05/2016)

4th May 2016

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Hon. Chairperson

The Protection against vulnerability;

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Creating an enabling environment;

The Provision of a comprehensive, integrated and sustainable social development service.

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That is the purpose of the budget vote we are debating here today.  Honourable Chairperson, the reality on the ground is the direct opposite.

The vulnerable are not protected.  The bulk of the budget is allocated to the much-needed grants for the elderly, the disabled and children.  At the time of writing this speech, the minister had still not responded to a written question asking how many grant recipients have, to date, fallen prey to the scourge of what has become known as illegal deductions.  A brief visit by DA Members of Parliament to the Eastern Cape revealed that some recipients end up not receiving anything after hundreds of Rands are deducted for airtime, electricity, loans, etc.!  This has gone on for years for some of these people.  This is far from being protected against vulnerability.

The development service environment is neither comprehensive, integrated and sustainable if the situation on the ground is anything to go by:

  • The striking social workers, working from a car park in the Free State, risking losing confidential client files due to the lack of office space, tools of the trade and vehicles are just a microcosm of what the social development service environment is like in this country.
  • The increasing caseloads for social workers mean they simply cannot provide adequate services to their clients, who are then further rendered vulnerable.  This situation takes place when the department, in fulfilling its indicator of “reforming and standardizing the social welfare system” goes on to say “trained social workers are crucial to a reformed and standardized system”.  To this end, the department continues to train the social workers and then misses the “crucial” aspect of this process –which is to place the trained social workers.  We can’t speak of a “reformed and standardized social welfare system”.  Social workers are to social development what doctors are to the health department.  Vulnerability is left to escalate to unprecedented levels whilst the department does a half-baked job of only training the social workers.  Thousands of them are sitting at home or have gone back to work at tills in supermarkets.
  • Recent reports of illegal early childhood development centres mushrooming everywhere is an indication that this environment is also not adequately monitored.
  • Another sign that the environment is far from being integrated is the recent closure of NGO’s due to lack of subsidies by the department.  As part of reforming the social welfare system, the department claims, rightly, that Non-Profit Organisations are key partners in providing social development services.  One wonders then, how key these organisations are when many of them are closing down due to non-payment of subsidies.

At a time when research report after research report decries the high and escalating levels of substance abuse and gender-based violence, the department has responded by building rehabilitation centres.  As we debate this budget, some of these centres have been standing as white elephants as planning for their operationalization has not been done.  There is no urgency in dealing with the scourge of gender-based violence and substance abuse.

Instead, the department is running events throughout the country at high costs, at the expense of providing basic services for which the department was established.

Coming to the entities of the department Hon. Chairperson – the National Development Agency is a serial strategy reviewer with the portfolio committee having been subjected to three consecutive years of brand new strategy reviews, with concomitant capacity-building budgets running into millions.  If staff has to be undergo capacity building each time a strategy is reviewed, it means there is a huge departure from the previous strategy.  This is taking place when the NDA seems to be narrowing the gap between what it does and what the department is doing.  This is another way of wasting the taxpayers’ monies.

SASSA is due to take over the distribution of grants to over 17 million vulnerable South Africans from April 2017.  We have requested a plan for this monumental undertaking to ensure that the recipients are not subjected to further unnecessary delays come April 2017.  We are eagerly awaiting the outcome of the case on illegal deductions after the interministerial task team came to present their report and had to be asked not to due to the case being before the courts.  One wonders what happens to the millions of South Africans whose meagre grants continue to be deducted.

Overloaded social workers, the closing of critical NGO’s, illegal grant deductions, high levels of substance abuse and gender violence and unopened rehabilitation centres are a far cry from ensuring protection against vulnerability.  My colleagues will expand on the depth of these maladies that haunt millions of South Africans on a daily basis

The minister has enough plans, frameworks, interministerial and other task teams and committees to deliver on her mandate as stated above but she is busy threatening to beat up community members whose only crime is to ask her to deliver.

As has been proven where the Democratic Alliance governs, that we deliver on time, quality and budget, we call on South Africans to ensure that they vote for change that will bring services to them and save themselves from any size of skeletons that are in the closets of some members of the executive.

Hon Chairperson, given the increase in food prices, the drought and the weak economy and a call for  belt-tightening, the Democratic Alliance supports this budget,  in spite of the department’s failure to deliver on its mandate in line with the purpose of this vote.

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