Teenagers do not deliberately fall pregnant, families do not ”farm” children and sick people do not refuse to take medicine just to get social grants, the Department of Social Development said on Wednesday.
”The provision of social assistance by the state does not promote teenage pregnancies and other alleged perverse incentives,” it said.
The findings were made in research commissioned after fears were voiced that people were putting themselves into difficult situations solely to obtain grants.
”The rapid increases in the growth of social-grant take-up rates during the period 2003/04 and 2004/05 raised concerns about the social-grant systems’ sustainability and potential perverse incentives,” said spokesperson Lakela Kaunda.
Researchers assessed claims for child-support grants (CSGs), foster-care grants (FCGs) and disability grants (DGs).
They found that while there has been a huge increase in the number of CSG beneficiaries, the take-up rate by teenage mothers remains low.
Teenagers accounted for just 5% of CSG recipients registered at October 2005, 13% less than the proportion of teenage mothers in the population.
More than half of CSG recipients applied for the grant when their children were over three, probably because they struggled to get the necessary documents or did not know enough about the grants.
Researchers dismissed allegations that mothers registered the same child in several provinces for duplicate grants.
When it came to FCGs, researchers found that most were paid to children who had lost at least one parent, and that most foster parents were related to their foster children.
In 41% of cases the foster parent was the grandmother, in 30% the aunt, in 12% other relatives and in just 9% were they unrelated people.
”Nearly two out of three foster parents receive more than one grant type,” said Kaunda.
”Because the majority of foster children are orphans, their placements are expected to be long-term,” said Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya.
As far as DGs were concerned, Skweyiya attributed an increase in take-up rates to people’s inability to enter the labour market and the scarcity of employment opportunities.
Researchers found that the DG was sometimes used to alleviate poverty rather than compensate people with temporary or permanent disabilities.
”There are indications that even if people are unsuccessful on first application, they return with new ailments until such time as their applications are approved,” said Kaunda.
She said some policy and administrative weaknesses in the provision of the DG had been found — including the stopping of temporary DGs — and these were being corrected. — Sapa