Minister of Welfare and Population Development Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi responds to articles on welfare month featured in Monitor last week
Poverty is one of the greatest challenges facing our country. It demands that all South Africans face up to some basic realities and come up with sustainable solutions.
The payment of social grants and pensions is an effective poverty alleviation programme of this government. We estimate that the two million or so people who receive these payments every month support more than seven million others in poor households. For the current financial year, this means R16-billion from government coffers is flowing directly into poor households.
While we are committed to maintaining this programme, we need to confront the reality that allocating ever- increasing amounts of state funds to pensions and grants for the poor can never be the solution.
Already, close to 90% of the welfare budget is being spent on these pensions and grants. How are we going to meet the other welfare needs – for counselling, rehabilitation, crisis intervention, residential care and other services?
One answer is to embark on a programme of cleaning up the social security system through re-registration of beneficiaries. By removing ghost beneficiaries, improving our administrative and management systems and eliminating fraud and corruption, savings can be passed on to these other welfare services. This is the value of the re-registration process and we are proceeding with it.
At the poverty hearings, representatives of poor communities spelt out an approach to meeting their needs based on the dictum: “Help us to help ourselves.” The call for an increased budget vote for welfare and for a citizen’s grant to be provided for all South Africans seems to ignore this plea.
The position adopted at the hearings reinforces most eloquently the fact that social security payments have the downside of creating dependency in cases where other solutions could and should be provided. We need to find these solutions, and I would like to offer a few.
The developmental approach to welfare is precisely an attempt to help poor and vulnerable individuals to help themselves. Through this approach, we are making a number of key shifts: contributing to the eradication of poverty; discouraging dependency; promoting the active involvement of people in their own development; employing a multi-faceted, multi- sectoral approach; and encouraging partnerships between the state, business, NGOs and other sectors of civil society.
It certainly does not mean there is no role for state-funded social security programmes such as the payment of pensions and grants.
In a concrete way, this approach has been implemented through our flagship programme for unemployed women with children under five, an income- generating programme operating in nearly all provinces. The government makes seed money available and the projects have to become self- sufficient after three years.
In the limited time of its operation, we have found the participating women earn much more than they would receive through a pension or grant, thereby reducing dependency on the state. This is the direction the Department of Welfare wishes to take by implementing this model on a larger scale.
One of the issues to emerge from the poverty hearings is the problem of access to credit for the poor. Together with partners such as the United Nations Development Programme, the department is proceeding with its plan to set up a social development fund. On October 16 the department will host a round-table discussion with local and international experts to flesh out this plan.
The call for a national forum on social security is a valid one. South Africa needs a comprehensive, affordable social security system in which all sectors have a responsibility, including business, the state and private citizens.
We have been working on this, and in a few weeks the department will host a summit on social security. The challenge is to align the various programmes, the Unemployment Insurance Fund, Workmen’s Compensation, private schemes and others.
While these policy issues are being addressed, the day-to-day administration of social security is also receiving attention. There needs to be a dynamic link between welfare and home affairs, the department responsible for issuing identity documents. In view of the hardships experienced by applicants and the centrality of the bar-coded ID in ridding the computer system of irregularities, welfare has earmarked funds to enable home affairs officials to be available at our service points.
The decision to limit the period for which a beneficiary can receive back pay to three months should be seen in the light of a concerted effort to ensure that all new applicants be processed in three months.
This is part of the re-engineering of social security that we have embarked on with the support of central government through a grant of R100- million for this financial year, and the same amount for the next year.
This funding will be used for information technology, improving the financial and administrative systems and maintaining an early warning system, which we are operating to detect budgetary problems.
The present social security system is a valuable element of the government’s anti-poverty programme. It is for this reason the government decided in favour of a nationally organised social security system, so we can improve its efficiency and ensure it is administered in the most professional and humane manner.
Officials who show scant regard for the dignity of the poor and vulnerable in our society, as well as those who line their own pockets, cannot be tolerated. In the past year about 80 officials in various provinces have been suspended, charged or convicted of fraud.
In the Eastern Cape, beneficiaries are now being paid monthly instead of bi- monthly. This is an important switch from the previous system, considering the constraints the provincial administration is facing.
There are no dedicated staff to do the payments and the province has been unable to buy additional vehicles for the travelling required. Through the involvement of the MEC for welfare, communication with communities has improved through visits to all 13 regions of the province and the establishment of welfare forums in every district.
These are some of the challenges we are confronting in an open and honest fashion. The Department of Welfare declared October welfare month to afford all our welfare partners – the people we serve and those NGOs that provide some of the services – an opportunity to exchange views and find solutions to these challenges.
The observance of welfare month is a valuable platform, which links up with a new direction in government communication of creating a dialogue with communities on the issues that affect them.
Poverty has many dimensions and the government’s anti-poverty programme is not only made up of social security payments. The community-based public works programmes of the Department of Public Works, the working for water project of the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, the government’s electrification programme and others have all provided jobs, services and infrastructure in communities neglected by the previous government.
While much is still to be done, we have certainly begun to lay the foundation for a better life for all our people.