PMR - Professional Management Review

Poverty-stricken communities are to be given the first priority when it comes to social development in Mpumalanga. The newly formed Department of Social Development has already set out four priorities that will be implemented to fight the war on poverty.

MEC of the Department, Fish Mahlalela, explains that they will speed up the implementation of the Early Childhood Development programme. “The Department will massively speed up implementation of this programme by expanding the number of trained staff and doubling the number of sites and child beneficiaries by end-2009.”

The Department also aims at intensifying the war on poverty. “Our medium-term objective is the development of a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy and its implementation plan, including broad societal consultations and agreement on issues such as the poverty datum line.”

With the help of community development workers, social workers, the community and home-based care workers, constituency offices, councillors and non-governmental organisations, the Department is to identify households and individuals in dire poverty and provide one or a combination of interventions available – social grants, social distress grants, food parcels, agricultural starter-packs, micro-finance and SMME assistance and enrolment into the Expanded Public Works Programme.

In the past, the bulk of the resources in this Department were geared towards social security services in the form of paying the different types of grants that the State offers to different categories of people. With the establishment of SASSA (the South African Social Security Agency), this function has moved to that agency. The Department will continue to work closely with SASSA.

“The provision of social security is a very important function of the developmental state, especially in the context of globalisation. We are all experiencing the effects of the sharp rise in the cost of living, which is impacting mostly on the poor,” says Mahlalela.

Mahlalela explains that the Government has already put in place measures that will ease the burden and buffer the poor in communities from these economic shocks. “The National Department of Social Development, through SASSA and our Department, have made R8m and R2,8m available respectively to provide assistance in easing the affordability of food to highly distressed families.

“The Social Development Department will support SASSA in trying to reduce the existing backlog of children in need of foster care placement and payment of appropriate grants. “We need to encourage all our people to come forward and provide care to the orphaned and less privileged children in our communities.”

The Department does not only get funding from the Government but has also been able to receive donor funding from the European Union to the tune of R23m to initiate a programme that will contribute more accessible, affordable primary healthcare to the poorest communities. “This programme will assist in addressing development indices on poverty and unemployment, which are apex priorities in the war against poverty,” Mahlalela adds.

Mahlalela explains that through this programme, they will fund 60 non-profit organisations over a period of 36 months that are providing primary healthcare services to the poorest of communities focusing on the poverty pockets.

Through social development, older persons are also to be taken care of. “Older persons are an integral part of our society and they should be given the dignity they deserve.” Mahlalela adds that older persons have increasingly had to bear the brunt of crime and many social ills.

“It has become very common to find older persons acting as the parents and caregivers to their grandchildren who have lost their parents mainly to urban migration or HIV and Aids,” says Mahlalela.

“As part of an effort to ensure economic participation of older persons, we have established three cooperatives in the last financial year in the three districts, focusing on economic empowerment programmes in line with the Older Persons Act. We will spend R21.9m to support 128 non-profit organisations and this will benefit 4803 beneficiaries. Our communities, especially those in rural areas, will be taken care of through this Department.”