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30 May 2008

Madam speaker
Honourable Premier TSP Makwetla
Honourable members
Mayors, Councillors
Traditional leaders
Acting head of the Department Dr Sibongile Zungu
Leadership of Labour and Business
Representatives of Civil Society
Members of the Media
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

The existence of mankind is from birth to death defined by the contest of two competing forces, death and life. The struggle for dominance of either of the forces primarily over the soul of human kind, defines mankind's pursuance of seeking mechanisms of survival. Mankind struggles are therefore defined by a need to conserve and preserve life, eradicate suffering and to bring about a just cause that benefits all inhabitants of mother earth.

Of late madam speaker we have witnessed turmoil throughout the world which has threatened the existence of mankind's we have already seen pictures of despair in many parts of the world; we have seen riots from Haiti, Bangladesh to Somalia. All these events are a direct response to what people across the world see as an onslaught that threatens their existence.

Food shortages and prices have reached unprecedented levels. Fuel costs have reached all time highs. In just three years or under, the price of staple food has almost doubled and as the President of the World Bank correctly observes;

"If left unchecked, the current global food shortages could set the World back seven years in the fight against extreme poverty and global disease".

These shortages and the current dramatic surge in food prices which has and will continue to plunge millions of our people here and abroad into a food crisis has a potential to negate the noble commitment made by world leaders in 2000, during the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) summit hosted by our country. The summit resolved on a set of goals and the most important being that we should halve poverty by 2014. Already certain countries have announced steps to cut on their exports of certain staple products, meaning the demand will continue to outweigh the supply thus making food a scarce commodity and therefore very expensive.

It is in this context that our plans as government should indeed be business unusual. As the social development sector we have already began thinking outside the box, because it is evidently clear that the amount of money that we are seeking approval in this august house here today, may not even be sufficient to respond to the looming crisis.

1. Institutional organisation and capacity

Having joined the Department of Health and Social Services just over two weeks ago, I have met and had intense engagements with the management of the Social Services component to understand the organisational thrust, priorities, culture and challenges of this component. What we came to agree with the management of Social Services is that the organisational structure does not suit our plans and therefore does not permit service delivery on the priorities identified by this government. The organisational structure currently in operation was last reviewed in 2003, and can therefore in no way address any of the new mandates after the creation of South African Social Security Agency (SASSA). The organisational re-engineering of the component has begun with earnest and Social Services have been given until June 2008 to finalise an organisational structure that will be tabled before Cabinet for approval. This will also allow the department to develop and staff a fully fledged monitoring and evaluation unit, because we are sorely lacking in this department and this impacts on our capacity to learn from mistakes and to measure our successes and impact.

Madam Speaker in order to achieve efficiency and maximum service delivery, a proposal has been submitted to the Honourable Premier seeking permission to separate the two components in the current Department of Health and Social Services to form two departments, namely the Department of Health and the Department of Social Development.

Madam Speaker a major challenge faced by the programmes in Social Services is the shortage of professionals such as Social Workers and other psycho-social practitioners that have to be in the field assisting the public on social development issues. The Corporate Services Chief Directorate has been tasked with drawing up a comprehensive recruitment and retention strategy that has medium-term and long-term actions.

The department is currently engaging in medium term remedies through the training of individuals to be Social Auxiliary Workers and the Masupatsela youth pioneer programme that will lengthen the reach of the current social workers that we have. The department will also make wider use of Community Development Workers to fill in the gaps. In total the department will train 200 Social Auxiliary Workers, 50 Community Development students and 270 Social Work students.

2. Social welfare

Madam Speaker the thrust of the programmes of the department in this financial year will be within the context of the 24 Apex priorities proclaimed by President Thabo Mbeki during his 2008 State of the Nation Address. The four priorities that we will be implementing are as follows:

1. We will speed up the implementation of the Early Childhood Development (ECD) programme; the department will massively speed up implementation of ECD programme by expanding the number of trained staff and doubling the number of sites and child beneficiaries by end-2009.

2. We will intensify the campaign on communicable diseases through the implementation of the updated strategy on HIV and AIDS.

3. We will intensify the war against poverty. Our medium-term objective is the development of a comprehensive antipoverty strategy and its implementation plan, including broad societal consultations and agreement on issues such as poverty datum line. In the interim we will utilise community development workers, social workers, the community and home-based care workers, constituency offices, councillors and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to identify households and individuals in dire poverty and provide one or a combination of interventions already available – social grants, social distress grant, food parcels, agricultural starter-packs, micro-finance and small-macro-medium enterprises (SMME) assistance, enrolment into Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) and so forth.

4. We will engage upon programmes that promote social cohesion especially in the context of racial, sexist and other forms of discriminations.

Madam Speaker, 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 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.

Madam Speaker the government has already put in place measures that will ease the burden and buffer the poor in our communities from these economic shocks. The National Department of Social Development through SASSA and our department have made eight million rand and two comma eight million rand available respectively to provide assistance to ease the affordability of food to highly distressed families.

The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) continues to be a model of service excellence. We reported last year that the turn-around time for the processing of applications has been reduced to one day if a person is in possession of all the required documentation.

The most important aspect of their work, which requires support from all of us, is their effort 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.

2.1 Prevention and treatment of substance abuse

Madam Speaker, the issue of substance abuse is a serious yet underrated issue in our communities. There's a wide range of different substances that people abuse and get addicted to. Some of these substances are legal and some are illegal. Of the legal substances that people consume and become addicted to is alcohol. The abuse of alcohol is rampant and is a key cause of crime and the breakdown of the family. Alcohol abuse and addiction cuts right across age groups, gender, race and class. The thing about alcohol is that the detection of addiction is very difficult and there's no easy legal recourse for addiction to alcohol. As part of our work in collaboration with various government departments, we shall engage various liquor outlets owners to sell liquor responsibly and within the stipulated legislations.

With regards to the increasing use of drugs such as cocaine, heroine and marijuana the department will engage other partners in the pursuit to raise awareness on the effects of drugs and to assist those addicted to find a way out. There are a number of young people that I have spoken to who have admitted to drug addiction, they however have no idea where to seek counselling so they can rid themselves of their addictions. So we also have to intensify the awareness of where those seeking help can find help.

Madam Speaker, the sub-programme on the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, like many of our sub-programmes will now become more prevention-oriented rather than treatment-oriented, this includes HIV and AIDS. The department will be on a campaign to get corporate companies to endorse any one of these sub-programmes as part of their social responsibility and outreach. We want to ensure that messages of prevention reach our people as much and as often as possible.

Our province is one of the leading provinces in the Ke-Moja awareness Programme which is aimed at educating our youth in particular to refrain from the use of drugs. Through this campaign we have reached 274 000 youth in and out of school. A task team composing of all stakeholders has been established at Emalahleni, which is one of the areas increasingly reporting high incidents of drug abuse, to look into the plan towards an establishment of a comprehensive centre for youth treatment services.

This year we will intensify the programme for the treatment of youth in the province, four comma seven million rand will be spent to support seven non-profit organisations and we are hoping to capacitate 839 people. A Provincial Mini Drug Master Plan will be developed, clarifying roles, responsibilities and strategies in the fight against drug abuse.

In response to the continuing problem of substance abuse that is experienced in some parts of our province, the department is planning to host a Summit on substance abuse aimed at raising awareness and strengthening the existing structures and calling for aggressive involvement of communities and individuals in the fight against substance abuse. This will contribute to the Apex of priorities on social cohesion as stated by President Thabo Mbeki.

2.2 Care and services to older persons

Older persons are an integral part of our society and they should be given the dignity they deserve. Older persons have increasingly had to bear the brunt of crime and many of our social ills. It has become very common to find older persons being the parents and caregivers to the young who are their grandchildren and have lost their parents mainly to urban migration or HIV and AIDS.

As part of an effort to ensure economic participation of older persons, we have established three co-operatives in the last financial year in the three districts focusing in economic empowerment programmes in line with the Older Persons Act. We will spend 21,9 million rand to support 128 non-profit organisations and this will benefit 4 803 beneficiaries.

We have already started with the full implementation of our Protection Programme, which is a notification register for elderly abuse, as a requirement of the Older Persons Act, and we have been able to service a total of 61 cases of older persons and 80 percent of the cases were followed up to render the necessary services.

We will also continue to implement a new approach to ageing which is developmental. This will include empowerment programmes which will focus on HIV and AIDS training, parenting skills, economic empowerment in the form of co-operatives.

2.3 Crime prevention and support

Madam Speaker, crime is the one characteristic of our society that is decreasing our abilities to live as free people. Crime fosters a climate of fear that pervades all aspects of social life. What is of more concern to us in the social sector is the increasing number of children that are involved in the perpetration of very serious crimes such as rape, robbery and murder.

Through the sub-programme on crime prevention and support we are involved in multi-stakeholder structures that are tackling the crime problem. The department is represented and is part of activities of the Justice Crime Prevention and Security cluster and the Multi Agency Mechanism structures.

Madam Speaker, the department has appointed an additional 27 probation officers who will assist in ensuring that children are assessed within 48 hours after arrest and that pre-trial and pre-sentence reports are compiled for presentation to the court. These probation officers are employed to deal exclusively with children in conflict with the law. In line with the democratic legal dispensation that seeks to differentiate between minors and adults in the criminal justice system, the procedure of diversion and alternative sentencing for children is now practised. This is to ensure that fewer children are arrested and detained. Last year a total of 866 children who were arrested, were diverted from the Criminal Justice System.

The University of the Western Cape is providing the training of additional 23 Assistant Probation Officers leading to a certification in Probation Work. This cadre of staff serves as the first point of contact with children in conflict with the law.

In pursuance of the department's mandate with regard to diversion, funding has been extended to three new non profit organisations (NPOs) rendering diversion services to target Nkomazi, Thembisile and Govan Mbeki municipalities and three comma eight million rand will be spent in this regard. In addition to the diversion programmes, a special emphasis will be placed on victim offender mediation, family group conferencing and restorative justice processes, home based supervision and life skills programmes.

2.4 Services to persons with disabilities

Madam Speaker it is sad that government is still finding it difficult to render services to people with disabilities. Access remains the biggest obstacle in this regard. We cannot claim to be a free nation for as long as many of our people with disability suffer from stigma, abuse and neglect in the hands of those that are supposed to provide care and support. We need therefore to mainstream services to people with disability to transcend all aspects of our lives. The department will ensure strict adherence to the integrated disability strategy, which indicates the roles all departments should play.

To promote the well-being, independent living, protection and the socio-economic empowerment of persons with disabilities we will in this financial year fund 114 NPOs targeting 2 931 beneficiaries with a budget of 19,7 million rand. This will ensure specialised care to adults and children in need of care; either through community based or institutionalised care.

The department will also begin to monitor the impact that disability grants are having on people with disabilities. Currently there's no monitoring of the use of disability grants, and it is not right to render a service and not measure the impact of your service.

2.5 Family and Victim Empowerment Programme

Madam Speaker we will continue to create and raise awareness about domestic violence within communities and families, and facilitate reconciliation within society and families and promote the safety and interests of victims of violence. Gender based violence and abuse of women and children continues unabated in our society.

We will continue to provide accommodation and counselling services to victims of violence to ensure that their psychological, welfare, safety and judicial needs are addressed. An amount of two comma nine million rand will be spent to fund ten non-profit organisations targeting 346 beneficiaries. We will also build eight shelters for victims of violence in the following municipalities; Nkomazi, Albert Luthuli, Dr JS Moroka, Bushbuckridge, Mbombela and Steve Tshwete.

More emphasis will be placed on educating the communities in the provision of additional services to perpetrators of domestic violence in the process of healing.

In support of the call made by the President, with regards to the Apex Priorities, the department will intensify its efforts in delivering programmes and services to promote functional families and prevent vulnerability in families. Special emphasis will be placed on challenges faced by foster parents, conducting educational talks on prevention of child abuse and neglect as well as family preservation.

Madam Speaker, family is an important and basic unit of any society. We therefore need to preserve and strengthen family cohesion and instil core societal values of Ubuntu to all our families. We will do this by funding to a total of nine NPOs with a budget of one comma four million rand.

2.6 Child care and protection services

Let us all remember that children are everyone's responsibility and future. South Africa wants a society where all children grow up to be responsible, productive, healthy and caring. It is our collective responsibility to provide a conducive environment for all our children to prosper.

One of the most important tenets of child development Madam Speaker in our policy discourse is Early Childhood Development (ECDs). This programme does not only expose children to development early in their lives, it also contributes significantly towards the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) through the training of caregivers and practitioners.

We will be conducting an audit of all existing ECD centres in the province both registered and unregistered to assist in better planning and resource allocation. Importantly, we have been able to increase the allocation per child from six rand to eleven rand per child per day in order to equalise the subsidy to all ECDs in the province.

Madam Speaker, we are proud to report to this august house that Provincial, District and Local forums have been established to improve the governance of ECDs and to raise awareness on child protection services. The ECD sub-programme in conjunction with the Population sub-programme in the department will conduct a survey to identify the number of children who should be in ECD centres but are not. Furthermore, the department will work with the Department of Education to ensure that the content and development of the children in ECD has the intended outcomes of preparing the children for entry into Grade R.

A total of 918 children were captured in the Child Protection Register, which reflects an increase in the level of awareness in communities with regards to the protection of the child. The department will intensify its efforts to protect and promote the well being of children and families that are at risk of abuse, neglect and exploitation.

We will rollout and strengthen child protection services in all three districts and this will include services to child headed families, the strengthening of ECD sites in line with the Expanded Public Works Programme, increasing the number of Life Skills Camps for Children and strengthening Children's Home services by increasing the rate of funding.

Madam Speaker 554 NPOs will be funded with a budget of R108 million part of this funding will go to the funding of ECDs. May I also take this opportunity to wish all the children of Mpumalanga a happy children's day that we shall be celebrating on Sunday, 1 June 2008 and also launching Youth Month.

2.7 HIV and AIDS
Madam Speaker, in 2007 government and civil society organisations collaborated and finalised a national Strategic Plan 2007-2011 for HIV and AIDS. Efforts will have to be made by all dedicated and committed individuals in implementing an integrated programme and plan to fight the HIV and AIDS scourge. The most important aspect of the fight against HIV and AIDS is prevention, prevention and prevention. Without neglect of the other pillars, we need to intensify programmes of ensuring that those not infected to remain so.

It is also important to continue to provide support, care and treatment to people already infected and affected by the pandemic. In this regard, home based care givers continue to play a very important role in rendering services in our communities to people infected and affected.

We have trained Social Workers, Community liaison officers, Caregivers, youth, older persons and persons with disabilities in an effort to increase access to services to people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS.

Madam Speaker as we continue to implement the Isibindi Model, which focuses on support for orphans in child-headed homes and vulnerable children in single-headed families affected by HIV and AIDS, we will fund 76 Home Community Based Care organisations, five organisations implementing the Isibindi Model and fund 24 drop-in-centres with a budget of 41 million rand.

2.8 Youth development

Madam speaker, our effort to foster social cohesion will be determined to a large extent by our capacity to incorporate youth in many government programmes. While much work in this regard has been done such as learnerships and the EPWP, the outcomes of the labour survey indicate that youth are the most affected by unemployment in our society.

In this financial year the department will support organisations, which render life skills programmes to youth in local municipalities for their empowerment and skills development. Workshops and camps focusing on additional life skills will be conducted to empower youth out of school, youth headed households and those under social safety nets.

The National Youth Service Programme (NYSP) will be intensified through the placement of 222 youth to facilitate access to skills development and entry into the labour market through the massification of EPWP. The Masupatsela Youth Pioneer programme is a government-wide programme promoting activism amongst the youth, in order to reduce poverty. It will also be a vehicle for intervention in the second economy, especially in terms of skills development and improving youth employability.

In Mpumalanga we will be recruiting 347 youth focusing on out of school youth, the unemployed, young people with matric, women, rural youth and youth with disabilities. The project cycle will be spread over 18 months and will run over a three year period focusing on skills training and development, national unity, service and obligation to the country.

3. Sustainable Livelihood Programme

Over the past 14 years of freedom our democratic government has increased it's spending on social security massively as a conscious effort of uplifting millions of our people trapped in poverty. It is however no secret Madam Speaker, and this is not to negate the importance of social grants, that we cannot as a developing country sustain that trajectory of increasing social grants to our people. What we need is a sustained effort to rescue many of our people from the poverty trap into the first economy so that they can actively participate in economic activities and lift them out of poverty and underdevelopment.

The sustainable livelihoods approach does not work in a linear manner and does not attempt to provide an exact representation of reality. Rather, it seeks to provide a way of thinking about the livelihoods of poor people that will stimulate debate and reflection about the many factors that affect livelihoods, the way they interact and their relative importance within a particular setting. This should help in identifying more effective ways to support livelihoods and reduce poverty. To begin with, the main vehicle we will be using is the establishment of cooperatives.

In relation to income generation projects, which are very critical in the fight against poverty, the department funded 27 projects for poverty alleviation benefiting over 1 000 people. In Nelspruit one project benefited more than 700 men seeking jobs and linked them with temporary jobs. A further four pilot projects were conducted in the Bushbuckridge and Kabokweni areas focusing on women co-operatives that were mobilised and trained for food security initiatives, financial management and linking social grants to sustainable livelihoods.

In order to further intensify our focus on sustainable livelihoods the department will support rural women co-operatives and other projects that seek to contribute towards self employment and economic empowerment of communities.

In this financial year, we will spend 15 million rand to fund 30 projects in sustainable livelihoods projects in our province. The department will continue to conduct workshops and seminars to capacitate and mobilise women, grant recipients and unemployed people.

Madam Speaker we will seek to synergise all our programmes, our first project is called "Your Child is My Child." This project will be addressing the problems faced by children from indigent families and at the same time inspiring entrepreneurship. We will fund a co-operative to sew school uniforms and we will buy and distribute to indigent children in the three districts beginning with 500 children per district. This project will be implemented in June 2008. The co-operative will be encouraged and assisted to make uniforms of a good quality that can be sold to retailers for resale and to other consumers.

3.1 Institutional building and support of NPOs

Madam speaker, the institutional capacity and building support sub-programme is critical in ensuring continuance of many government funded community projects. In many instances when government withdraws funding and support to community organisations, they tend to fail due to lack of capacity in financial, fundraising and project management. This then negates attempts to free as many people from the bondages of poverty.

To assist NPOs to grow in strength the department will support the Community Builder of the Year Awards project in partnership with Old Mutual, Sowetan and South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to encourage the spirit of volunteerism and nation building and further acknowledge and support the contribution of the diverse individuals and groups that work towards development and the upliftment of communities.

The department will continue supporting 423 NPOs and other community organisations to manage their development initiatives and enhance their human resource capacities and human capital development in rendering social services in communities.

3.2 Population, Research and Demography

Madam Speaker one of the critical tasks of government is effective planning. This is important because it assists in determining what resources are needed and where they should be deployed. However in order to plan properly we need to have correct data and up to date information.

It is in this context that we made a commitment in our last presentation in this august house that the department will be working together with local municipalities to integrate demographic and development information into the planning of the integrated development plans. Progress in this regard has been made, although there is still room for improvement and better co-ordination.

We also committed ourselves to conduct a research to understand fully the extent and impact of orphans and children living alone in our communities. The research work has been completed and we presented the findings to our stakeholders at an NPO forum. More importantly, the findings of this research have already been integrated into our planning for resource allocation and support.

The Population, Research and Demography sub-programme will this year be profiling all the wards in our communities so that we have an understanding of all the dynamics in all our wards. This project will be run in conjunction with the Masupatsela Youth Pioneer Programme. Tools of analysis will be crafted to produce results on a household level and on a ward level. The sub-programme will continue their work with community development workers and will facilitate their training on the principles of the population policy and on the ethics of data collection.

3.3 Infrastructure

Madam Speaker this component has a huge infrastructure backlog partly due to the historical emphasis on social grants at the expense of development work of the component. In many areas, confidentiality of our clients is compromised as many social workers have to conduct their business in open areas.

We are going to spend 45 million rand towards the construction of offices in the three districts in the following areas;

Ehlanzeni District:
* KaNyamazane
* Masoyi
* Hluvukani

Gert Sibande District:
* Volksrust
* Balfour
* Bethal

Nkangala District:
* Mkobola
* Moloto

Madam Speaker the world outlook today is not favourable to many of our poor people. The market forces clearly have no mercy to the vulnerable majority of the peoples of the world. This calls for unity in action. All of us have an enormous responsibility to put hands on deck to accelerate the fight against poverty, to realise the Millennium Development Goals of halving poverty by 2014.

Madam Speaker just two days ago on Tuesday a report was tabled in the United Nations (UN). The report was compiled by an independent humanitarian research group on the conduct of peacekeeping forces and aid workers deployed in countries varying from Sierra Leone to Haiti. The research found that peacekeepers and aid workers often rape women and young girls in the countries they are deployed in. This was a startling revelation considering that they are supposed to safeguard the rights and dignity of the people, who are already disempowered. Madam Speaker this highlights our call "To create a caring society".

The house is therefore requested to approve the budget of the department, which amounts to R662, 331 958 and distributed as follows:

Programme 1: Administration R118,517 000 00
The programme provides policy direction, overall strategic leadership of the whole department and monitoring and evaluation.

Programme 2: Social welfare R408,787 958 00
To provide integrated developmental social welfare services to the poor and vulnerable in partnership with stakeholders and civil society organisations.

Programme 3: Development and research R135,027 000 00
Provide sustainable development programmes which facilitate empowerment of communities, as well as information towards the implementation of the National Population Policy.

Madam Speaker and Honourable Members, let me take this opportunity to thank the Acting HOD and her management as well the staff without whom this department would not be what it is today. Your honesty, integrity and commitment is required even more if we are to make a real difference in the living conditions of our people.

Allow me to thank the Premier and the colleagues in the EXCO for the support they gave me in all my previous portfolios and hope they will do the same in this one. To the Portfolio Committee Members, the success of this department in meeting its mandate is highly dependent on your effective oversight role.

Thank you.

Issued by: Department of Health, Mpumalanga Provincial Government
30 May 2008