South Africa is not fulfilling its Millennium Development Goals, the Black Sash on Tuesday.
The Blacksash believed this was because the country had ”not yet fully embraced the mechanisms to eradicate poverty [as] outlined in our own constitution”, spokesperson Sarah Nicklin said in a statement.
The country’s goals include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, and halving the proportion of people who earn less than US$1, about R8, a day between 1990 and 2015.
The Blacksash made an oral submission on South Africa’s progress on its goals to a South African Human Rights Commission inquiry on Tuesday.
It told the commission a large proportion of working people were still not included in private retirement or health savings.
”Additionally, people are still being excluded from state-controlled social insurance, such as domestic workers who do not benefit from the Compensation for Occupational Injury and Diseases Act,” said Nicklin.
”There is also an increasingly large number of workers in the informal sector, including those in casual or temporary employment, who are also excluded from any retirement or unemployment provision,” she said.
The Black Sash had recommended that the state provide a clear roadmap on how the right to social security would be realised.
It believed the government should be held accountable to its promises on service delivery excellence as formulated in its Batho Pele guidelines.
Nicklin said the organisation had called for the activation of a social development advisory board as a multi-stakeholder body to oversee the roll-out of a comprehensive social security system.
It had also asked the government to establish a standing commission on poverty, which would consider and define its multi-dimensional nature.
The recommendations included a call for the government to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESECR).
Necklin noted that President Jacob Zuma had acknowledged in his State of the Nation address that social grants were the most effective form of poverty alleviation.
But, she said, the current social security system was not sufficiently comprehensive to meet constitutional obligations to provide support for all in need. — Sapa