Hon Chairperson, Deputy Minister, Chief Whips and the Whips of this House, Speakers and Deputy Speakers present here today, executive council members present, hon members, Salga leadership present here today, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, please receive my greetings from "the platinum province".
Children are not only protected from abuse but also from other harmful aspects of life, like hunger and other types of deprivation. With regard to child protection in the North West province, all alternative care and adoption placements are checked against Part B of the child protection register as well as the sex offender register. We check them against the child protection register for screening purposes. We don't want to find ourselves having handed a child to people who will abuse them more. We are very discreet when it comes to this.
We have also managed to capture hunger cases on the electronic child protection register. An total of 43 675 children are in foster care in the North West, with 6 500 children having been newly placed in foster care. We have reviewed a further 13 000 placements.
The North West province's foster care strategy to reduce foster care backlogs has been successful. We have managed to bring about a zero backlog in one district, Kenneth Kaunda.
A total of 101 temporary safe care placements were screened in this financial year and we intend to increase the temporary safe care fee to the equivalent of foster care as soon as possible. Throughout the province, 75 000 children have been reached through prevention and early intervention programmes such as the child trafficking prevention programme that we introduced during the 2010 Fifa World Cup. We all know how vulnerable our children were during that time.
Furthermore, we have completed a 300-bed child and youth care centre in Mafikeng in the Ngaka Modiri Molema District Municipality. We are funding a further six child and youth care centres throughout the province. A centre in the Bojanala District of the province has been accredited to admit victims of human trafficking, including children, and we have managed to successfully return three children to their native land, Lesotho, through this intervention.
We have managed to capacitate 600 social workers with the provisions of the Children's Act and have trained a further 50 auxiliary social workers. To ensure the protection of children in our province, we have employed 500 social workers and absorbed 350 auxiliary social workers to assist with the implementation of the child protection Act. Furthermore, the department has set aside R32 million for child protection in the North West province.
In conclusion, I humbly request that the other departments come to the party with regard to child protection, so that child protection is not perceived to be the baby of only the departments that are directly involved. A child is raised by a village, never by an individual. Ngwana ke sejo, o a hlakanelwa. [In order for us to succeed, we should work together.]