Stuart Hess
MURIEL JACOBS has received R565 in child maintenance from the government since April last year to look after her two children.
The grant, she says is not enough: “I can’t cope with R565, things are getting more expensive. Where must I get money from for everything I need at home?”
Jacobs has two children – a girl of 16 and a boy of 11 – and she needs the money from the Welfare Department to pay for her children’s survival. The 32-year-old single mother moved into her mother’s house in Jukskei Lane, Riverlea, west of Johannesburg, at the beginning of last year after the death of her parents.
“They [the government] are mad. How can they lower it [the maintenance grant], children need this money?”
The grant is her only source of income. “It is very important for me. I spend about R300 on groceries, R120 on meat, which I buy from neighbours, about R150 for rent, lights and water, and I can only afford clothes for the children if I buy on lay- by.”
Jacobs feels sorry for those black mothers who have never received money from the government, but she believes it is “ridiculous” for the government to lower the grant, especially “if children are in need. It’s unfair for them to take money away from children. They can afford to pay large sums out in disability grants, but they give such a little for children.
“By the middle of the month, when there is no money left, it becomes a real struggle, we have to manage from day to day.
“I started drawing maintenance in April last year after I lost my job as a packer in a supermarket. I am looking urgently for a job at the moment.”
Her husband disappeared in 1990. “I haven’t seen him since, and I don’t know where he is.”