Chair, hon Minister of Health, hon Deputy Minister of Social Development, hon MECs of various provinces, colleagues from the National Council of Provinces, distinguished guests and our management from the departments, ladies and gentlemen, and all guests who are here with us, good afternoon.
Chairperson, before getting into the substance of this Budget Vote, I would like to take this opportunity to say, on behalf of all of us here, that we really appreciate the work that was done by my predecessors, Dr Zola Skweyiya and Dr Jean Swanson-Jacobs, for the able leadership that they provided in this department and in this portfolio, in particular.
Social Development is tasked with tackling daily challenges afflicting society's most poor and vulnerable people. South Africa's poor, like their counterparts in most parts of the world, face additional challenges on account of the current global financial crisis, which is resulting in a humanitarian crisis, because, indeed, whichever way we look at it, the crisis that we are facing now is a humanitarian crisis. During these past few months, hundreds of thousands of jobs have vanished and hundreds of thousands of houses and other properties were lost, and consequently, the living conditions of the poor and the most vulnerable have indeed worsened.
The additional challenges being visited on the poor necessitate that we, as hon members gathered here today, deployed here in this Parliament and this National Council of Provinces, must deepen our socioeconomic responses, particularly as government responses to this crisis and, thereby, keep us steadfast in the pursuit of the goal of creating an inclusive and a caring society. As stated by our President in his state of the nation address, "We shall not rest; we dare not falter in our drive to eradicate poverty".
Before elaborating on our responses to the current humanitarian crisis, Chair, and also providing some details of our programmes and interventions, I wish to reaffirm the need for the social development sector, inclusive of all the national departments, our public entities and civil society organisations, to work in partnership. Partnership is indeed necessary, and I'm also referring to our nongovernmental organisations, NGOs, who are up there in the gallery.
Chairperson, last week I met with the MECs responsible for Social Development; some of them are here in this august House. In that meeting we assessed the progress made and also appreciated the tasks that lay ahead us. Collectively, we agreed that we need to work together and much harder as a single unit towards the fulfilment of the hopes of all South Africans to enable them to realise their own ambitions.
Social Development is a concurrent function, as we all know, which is performed by national and provincial departments. On the one hand, the national department, in line with its constitutional mandate, provides policy direction and oversight for service delivery. On the other hand, the provincial departments are responsible for service delivery, mainly in partnership with civil society organisations, hence this necessity for us to become one unit.
It is the policy of our department to ensure that we provide policy leadership and lend support to our provincial counterparts to enable them to improve service delivery in a manner that attains our policy and programme objectives. This commitment, Chairperson, can be seen in the increase of the expenditure on the number of new policy initiatives that speaks to our goal of creating a caring society and, indeed, also creating a better life for our people.
Our close co-operation with the provinces in the past few years has seen marked improvement in the provision for developmental welfare services, the diversification in the methods used to deliver such services, as well as the enhancement of quality. We will continue to accelerate the implementation of key pieces of legislation such as the Children's Act, the Older Persons Act, and the Prevention of and Treatment for Substance Abuse Act, amongst many others.
The impact of the financial crisis that I spoke about earlier on has been much deeper than expected, highly devastating indeed to many, and very destructive in its severity in respect of those who are on the margin in particular. We all must rally to the President's call for a decisive response. Drawing on the National Economic Development and Labour Council, Nedlac, framework agreement, on the response to the financial crisis, Social Development is rolling out a package of interventions.
At present, we do know, as a matter of fact, that over 13 million South Africans receive social assistance benefits, and of these beneficiaries, nine million are children. Whilst concerns may remain about the affordability and sustainability of this particular programme, it is undoubtedly government's most effective poverty alleviation intervention, no doubt about that. It is important, therefore, to remember also that section 27 of our Constitution makes the provision of social assistance an obligatory function. It makes it obligatory. The state can't look away from that; we are obliged to help those who are needy.
We have increased the age of eligibility for the child support grant to children up to 15 years in January this year, as was announced, and 70 000 men have benefited from the old-age pension as a result of our phased process towards equalisation of pensionable age between men and women at 60 years. At present it is from 61 years, those who are eligible for the old- age grant. We are moving towards that, and next year men and women will all be eligible for the old-age grant at 60 years of age. [Applause.] Over the medium-term, we will gradually extend the child support grant to children up to 18 years as it is policy and a requirement.
As from April this year, the values of grants were increased to ameliorate the impact of inflation. The old-age grant and disability grants were increased from R960 to R1 010; the child support grant from R230 to R240; the foster care grant increased from R650 to R680 and the care dependency grant from R960 to R1 010, obligatory measures.
In order to intensify the fight against child poverty, we will register an additional 20 000 children under 15 years by the end of August 2009. We will soon table a plan for the phased extension to 18 years of the child support grant to be implemented over the current Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, cycle. I don't hear what you are saying; you will have your chance to stand here, please. [Laughter.]
The budgetary allocation for the provision of social relief of distress was increased fivefold by means of a special allocation in November 2008 as part of government's response to rising food prices and the resultant adverse socioeconomic circumstances that our people face. The special allocation increased the social relief budget from R124 million to R624 million. The rapid distribution of this additional fund, that allocation that we received, bears testimony to the positive co-operation between the national and provincial Departments of Social Development. The R624 million enabled us to reach a good number of 765 347 people through cash and in- kind benefits, particularly those not covered by the social assistance grants. These are needy people who have nothing.
From November last year to April this year, 568 909 food parcels and vouchers were issued to eligible poor households, 128 746 school uniforms were issued to eligible learners from poor households and 35 679 cash payments were made to other eligible beneficiary households while 32 013 eligible individuals received other forms of in-kind assistance in the form of blankets and so on. We will seek to augment to our resources and enhance our abilities to reach people who suffer undue hardships not of their own making. In partnership with the provincial departments of social development, we will explore working with faith-based organisations and NGOs, all in good standing also, to assist in the distribution of social relief to those in distress. This year we will introduce into Parliament a new Bill which is intended to amalgamate various relief programmes, being administered by the Department of Social Development. Of course, relevant consultation will take place, and this Bill will provide for the delegation of the administration of such relief programmes to the provincial Departments of Social Development, which will support and exercise oversight over it. We will also exercise support and exercise oversight over this programme.
Chairperson, with respect to improving the livelihood of the poor, our department will support community-based organisations and institutions that work towards the overall wellbeing of our people. This includes supporting community foundations and organisations which are involved in advocating for women's rights, women's protection and safety, as well as their inclusion in the economic activities of our country. And I want to say, whilst I'm here, that I may not say lot about issues of welfare, but the Deputy Minister will allude to those issues.
The department is also working with the Community Food Bank Network of South Africa and the Global Food Banking Network to pilot the food bank concept in our country. Four community food banks, which are already in place situated in Durban, Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg and one in the rural village of Umkhanyakude District are being supported through this initiative. I welcome the private sector's contribution to complement government's efforts towards the war on poverty, and I take this opportunity to appeal also to other sectors of our society to partner with us in this campaign.
Chairperson, clearly the antipoverty strategy and its concomitant war on poverty campaign are part of government's overall attempts to improve the livelihood capabilities of our people, and I hope somebody from Cope is listening, especially the speaker just before me. [Interjections.] Here too, our department has specific contributions to make. Our task in this respect is to collate information on the needs of households and communities in 150 wards so that government can respond to those needs adequately and systematically. And it is not only needs about grants, but also needs about what we can do to alleviate poverty and to actually make people able to fish for themselves instead of us, government, fishing for them. This we will do in partnership with provincial Departments of Social Development as well as, relevant civil society organisations and the Independent Development Trust, IDT, working through community development workers and Masupatsela Youth Pioneers, and I will speak about this Masupatsela later, in a few minutes' time.
The second phase of the Expanded Public Works Programme is important to our efforts in creating job opportunities for the poor. Our department will continue to co-ordinate training of an additional 1 500 community caregivers and over 25 000 early childhood development practitioners for our home-based or community-based care and early childhood development, ECD, programmes.
Chairperson, the issue of early childhood development may be one of our department's most important contributions to the challenge of promoting sustainable livelihoods and reducing intergenerational poverty over time. I hope also that the hon member from Cope understands that we are working on dealing with intergenerational poverty, even when we are providing food parcels. Early childhood development is indeed part of government's long- term goal on investing in human capital, which is pivotal to any society's efforts to beat systemic poverty. We will accelerate the registration of ECD sites from the current 13 743 to 14 401 and increase the number of children in registered ECD centres to 758 000. These goals, Chairperson, are informed by the ideal that everyone counts and everyone has a purpose in life, and, yes, everyone is significant.
We need to pay attention to developing our youth. The most critical aspect of our work with young people is to empower them, to instil the spirit of patriotism in them and also to ensure that they achieve citizenry. It is for this reason that we are implementing a programme called Masupatsela Youth Pioneer Programme as part of our broad national service programme. To date, 2 114 youth pioneers were recruited into the programme, while over 1 780 of them took part in the war on poverty initiatives throughout our country. We will support provinces in the creation of programmes and directorates that are specifically dedicated to youth matters and ensure that their concerns are treated with the attention that they deserve.
Chairperson, we are embarking on strategies to improve our institutional capabilities to better respond to, and indeed also to protect the poor from the adverse effects of poverty. This includes improving the capacity of the South African Social Security Agency, Sassa, as a key service delivery institution. A thorough business process re-engineering initiative will be implemented here in Sassa in order to, amongst other things, ensure that we improve the turnaround time for processing grant applications. I am saying amongst other things; we will do many things through this business process re-engineering, BPR.
We are working with the Post Office as well, on measures to reduce the cost of grant payments. My time is up. Unfortunately, I still wanted to talk about occupation-specific dispensation, OSD, but I'll find a way of dealing with those issues. Thank you very much. [Applause.]