Budget Vote Debates address children’s issues

Children featured in both the Budget Vote 15: Basic Education yesterday, and Vote 19: Social Development today. Peoples Assembly took at look at what MPs said about their rights and the services young people were receiving.

Yesterday, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga reported that her Department’s overall budget for 2014/15 is R19.6 billion, an increase of R2 billion from last year’s R17.5 billion budget.

Minister Motshekga said that there is 99% enrollment in compulsory basic education, and that 86% of our schools have been declared no-fee schools, with “over 9 million learners [being] fed at school through the National School Nutrition Programme.”

The Minister added that since 2011/12, R7.7 billion has been spent on the roll out of textbooks and that “millions of textbooks and workbooks have been delivered to schools”. Surprisingly, none of the opposition MPs took her to task on the Limpopo textbook saga. The total allocated infrastructure budget for 2014/15 financial year is R10.1 billion, with the Minister promising “we will continue to eradicate mud schools and other inappropriate structures particularly in the Eastern Cape.” However, she did not elaborate on targets, notably how many mud schools would be eradicated and replaced and by when.

In her speech, DA Shadow Minister of Basic Education, Annette Lovemore, focused on education as a means to employment. She said that currently in South Africa we were achieving quantity i.e. the number of learners being enrolled, at the expense of quality education.

“A National Treasury report states that unemployed youth in South Africa are generally low-skilled and the principal reason given by employers for not employing young people is that schooling does not accurately indicate skill levels and unskilled inexperienced workers are seen as risky to employ. In other words, they can’t trust the Senior Certificate,” Lovemore said.

She went on to say that the government was being hamstrung by SADTU, whose members got away with ill-disciplined behaviour and escaped accountability. “You have to reclaim your management prerogative from SADTU, Minister, as does every Education MEC… Use the courts, do whatever it takes, but make SADTU understand it does not run education in this country,” Lovemore said.

The DA’s Sonja Boshoff said that the ANC had not lived up to its promises of providing a safe and secure environment for learners and that school principals were not adhering to the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

“When a child dies in a pit toilet, or when in excess of 100 cases of sexual abuse of learners by teachers are received annually by the South African Council of Educators, then alarm bells ring. When the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention finds that most violence at schools takes place in the classroom… alarm bells ring,” said Boshoff.

She added that it was of huge concern that only 40% of our learners who start Grade 1, finish grade 12.

This morning, Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini said the government’s social assistance programme had grown significantly, with five times more recipients receiving grants now than in 1994. She added that her Department was also working hard to make the system more efficient. The Minister admitted the take up rate for child support grant in the infants to two year-old category was low and that her department would be looking into the reasons why that was occurring.

“We are committed to making early childhood development a priority,” Dlamini said. She explained that government had audited 19 900 (Early Childhood Development) ECD facilities throughout the country and that it was clear there was a problem of over crowding, a need for more training of ECD practitioners, that 44% of centres were unregistered, and that there was lack of facilities for disabled children.

Dlamini went on to say that government is going to be rolling out mobile ECD facilities in rural areas. Furthermore, her Department is currently working towards encouraging the corporate sector “to adopt an ECD”.

As part of the their response to violence against women and children, the Minister explained that a 24-hour national Gender-Based Violence command centre had been created to offer services to survivors of abuse. She added that 75 social workers were on board to offer trauma counseling and referral services.

The Minister told MPs that her department would be clamping down on loan sharks preying on social assistance beneficiaries when they come to collect their grants, describing them as “predatory, immoral and exploitative in nature”.

Dlamini said, “I have established a ministerial task team comprising representatives from the Black Sash, Social Development (Department) and SASSA (SA Social Security Agency) to investigate this matter and to make recommendations on a possible course of action with the current payment environment.”

Patricia Kopane, the DA’s Shadow Minister of Social Development did not waste time criticising the delivery of social assistance, saying that 2.3 million eligible children are not receiving the child support grant due to red tape and administrative obstacles.

Kopane added, “The Financial and Fiscal Commission’s 2013 report highlighted the low financial provision by government to child welfare services which amounted to R5.7 billion in 2013/14 compared to the estimated need of at least R12.9 billion.”

She went on to say that the Human Rights Commission had found that the Social Development Department was failing to comply with the Children’s Act of 2005 with regard to the maintenance of the National Child Protection register.

“Given the fact that there were over 25 000 sexual offences crime against minors reported in 2011/2012 alone, and there are only 488 names on the child protection register, it is simply unacceptable honourable Minister. South African children deserve to be protected now!” Kopane said.

The EFF’s Hlengiwe Hlophe began her speech by saying that her party did not support the budget. “We say give people grants not peanuts Minister… what are people supposed to do with R310?” asked Hlophe. She added that twenty nappies cost R85 and that 1.2kg of milk formula cost R233. “We propose that as EFF all social grants be increased by 100%,” Hlophe said.

The EFF MP then took a stab at the Minister’s ECD plans. “One of the main aims of the Department of Social Development is to enhance ECD in the country however these words fall empty on the day-to-day experiences of many rural and township pre-school teachers and young children.” She then cited the example of a pre-school teacher in the Eastern Cape, who works at a school that is allegedly “broken down and could fall at any moment - the children receive no feeding scheme from the Department and she has never been paid for her work”.

Both IFP MP Mkhuleko Hlengwa and the ACDP’s Cheryln Dudley raised the challenges in the adoption system in their speeches.

“The [Social Development] Department’s failure to comply with the [Children’s Act] by timeously processing paper work to facilitate adoptions is grossly unacceptable. It has had a detrimental effect on the lives of orphans - indeed adoption rates have halved since 2009,” Hlengwa said.

Dudley referred to a “crisis of adoption” and said that by 2015 South Africa would have 5.5 million orphans yet adoptions figures were declining. She blamed red tape and “over control”, adding that serious delays were “preventing a needy child from being in the arms of a loving parent”.