OFFICE ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN LIMPOPO

PRESENTATION TO THE JOINT MONITORING COMMITTEE ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF QUALITY OF LIFE AND STATUS OF WOMEN BY FANANI JANE MANUGU : VENUE: PARLIAMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA

DATE: 12 AUGUST2005


1. PURPOSE

The purpose of this document seeks to provide the Committee with the road we have traveled as a strategic business unit in answering to our constitutional mandate of promoting, protecting and equalization of opportunities for women in this Province in the past 12 months.


In our endeavor of articulating these achievements for the past, we will also draw the attention of this gathering to the challenges, barriers and intervention strategies that can be employed to address the issues.

2. BACKGROUND


The Office on the Status of Women was first established as a Women's commission way back in 1994 until it was fully established as an Office on the Status of Women with the strategic objective of improving the quality of life and status of women in the Umpopo Province in 1997.


3. STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES OF THE UNIT


The strategic objectives of the Office on the Status of Women can be summarized as follows:


4. ACHIEVEMENTS.


The section dealt with achievements of government in improving the quality of life and status of women in the past year on areas of: -


4.1 STRUCTURES OF GOVERNMENT (PROVINCIAL AND LOCAL)


The statistics on gender in the economy painted a grim and an unequal picture between men and women. In October '99, 26% of African women compared to 41 %African men were gainfully employed in the open labour market,


This picture has since changed drastically within the public service; presently within the senior management echelon 32,2 % are women, a dramatic increase of the previous year of 29%, but this cannot be said about the local government structures in the province. Early last year the office requested municipalities to submit their equity status, unfortunately only 11 municipalities out of 32 complied, although this was later solved by the audit done by SALGA.


Ten municipalities and one district municipality submitted their gender equity status.


The total senior management component is at present 124 of that 33 are women managers these translate into 22,6% in all the municipalities. Five municipalities of those mentioned had reached the 30% equity target


These are shocking statistics when considering that all six District and 26 Local Municipalities have councilors dealing with gender issues. These are people who have to see that gender programs are integrated in all the programs of municipalities including the appointment of GFPs in municipalities, but up to so far only one district municipality has a GFP albeit at a very low level.


The provincial picture will be illustrated in the following way:

Item

Public works

Health and welfare

Local government and housing

Education

Safety security and liaison

Gender Policy

Yes

National policy

No

Yes

No

Gender committee

Headed by GM

Non

Headed by manager

Headed by personnel officer

Non

GFP Focus

Deals with gender only

Deals with gender only

Deals with gender only

Deals with gender only

Has other programs

Programs and projects

CBPWP with a 2 million budget, Sakhasonke with a 28 million budget, Gundu Lashu

Non provided

Non provided

Girl Education Movement and Life skills education

Crime prevention

Budget

Rose from 200 000 in 2002 to 440 000 in 2004

Rose from 100 000 in 2002 to 300 000 in 2004

Rose from nil in 2002 to 2 568 000 in 2004

Rose from 78 000 to104 000 in 2004

Nil budget to 50 000 in 2004

Procurement

Tenders for women rose from 291 in 2002 to 346 2004

No information

Decreased from 130 in 2002 to 26 in 2004

Non info

No info


Five other departments did not submit their audit report although there are structures dealing with gender in those departments.


4.2 PROGRAMS IN MUNICIPALITIES


A gender audit conducted in one district municipality that has four local municipalities revealed the following:


The monitoring that was done by the office in the past twelve months will be done in the following summary:

KEY OUTPUT

SERVICE DELIVERY INDICATORS

ACTUAL PERFORMANCE/ ACHIEVEMENTS

GAPS AND INTERVENTIONS

RECOMMENDATIONS

Management of Office on the Status of Women.

The development of management system for gender mainstreaming in line function departments.

Economic Empowerment :

An assessment has revealed that of 690 tenders awarded in the last quarter of the year in Public works 582 and 14 were awarded to both women and disabled people respectively.


Out of 506 houses sold 237 were sold to women. In the first 2 months of the new financial year these are the findings:

April statistics were collected from Economic Development : Out of 112 tenders the following went to women

  • 12 companies 100% owned by women
  • 2 companies with 90% women ownership
  • 2 companies with 80% ownership of women
  • 2 companies with 70% ownership of women
  • 1 company with 60% ownership of women
  • 3 companies with 50% ownership of women
  • 1 company with 42% ownership of women
  • 1company with 33% ownership of women
  • 2 companies with 20% ownership of women


The total amount of tenders: R388 849 021.28

R283 203 780.72 went to women.


In May the following were the statistics:

Public Works:

Female 28 R32 805 533

Male 44 R7 279 320


Education :

Female 6 R2 492 329

Male 8 R4 127 246


Safety:

Female: 2 R93 749.26

Male 3 R253 852.63


Economic Development

Female: 4 R224 465.74


Health:

Female 6 R30 000 000


Transport only had males Local government:

Female 6 R314 806.00

Male 4 R228 248.00


Premier

Female 2 R74 290.30

Male 6 R341 568.87


Gender based analyses program


The evaluation workshop held with Canadian International Development Agency.


Six departments submitted the audit profiles (refer to table in 4.1).


Identified special projects in line function departments for evaluation


Review on special projects on GBA reveal the following-

All departments to develop a comprehensive database for women entrepreneurs. A consultation will be done with all women business owners to submit their profiles in order to trace fronting.

Departments to submit sex-desegregated data to facilitate monitoring


Programs and projects to be identified on a quarterly basis


Audits to be done on a three-year basis

 

Sakhasonke

In this infrastructure development program, more than 200 people were trained and those capacitated translates into 50, 25% of women.

   
 

Indigent policy

Instituted a GBA pilot project on this policy at Thumela municipality. In our findings , within a municipality which has a total inhabitants of 52 000, 30 000inhabitants benefited from this project

   
 

Bicycles Projects

150 bicycles distributed in the three districts

 

Distribution in the remaining districts with 50% going to women

 

Food security

A Vegetable project at Driekop started in 2003 with 7 ha of land-52 people are employed with 80% being women and in a year’s time, 800 568 was generated as income

   
 

Analyze equity status in departments

Only two departments have not yet reached the 30% target

 

Impress on the two departments to reach the target

 

Analyze and monitor social security services

Type of grant

No. as at March 2004

Number as at July 2005.


Child support grant


Foster care


1068909

986 762

23 535

986 762

39414


There was an improvement by FCG and on CSG the monitoring is based on the success of the anti- fraud campaign where there is a great decline 82 147

The general abuse of CSG in our communities, intensify general awareness around the use of social grants

Recommended a strategy to deal with loss of schooling when young women collect their children’s grants.

 

Monitoring of violence against women and children

The provincial crime prevention strategy emphasized the need to implement strategies dealing with violence against women and children. In June the provincial SAPS report showed a 7% decrease in violence cases while on the other there is an increased reporting of cases in two districts, which may be interpreted positively or negatively

 

Have a working relationship with SAPS to monitor statistics. The implementation of the Provincial Strategy.

Skill Development program looking at women and education.

The development capacity building strategies to empower our women

Monitored the skills training of SMS for the past 12 months-the following departments will be discussed:


Transport: despite the department’s equity figures, the training trends seems to have more men trained at a ratio of 3:1


Local Government and Housing: the trends are also indicating that more men are trained than women which can also be attributed to the equity status that is lower for women.


Health and Social Development: the ratio is also 3:1

Sport, Arts and Culture: did not even bother to give sex-disaggregated data

The only department under this review that ABET PROGRAM


In the infrastructure cluster 511 adult learners for this program, of those 190 were women.


Monitoring the registration of girls in mathematics and science in grades 10-12


Mathematics:

Grade female male

10 56 888 48 814

11 44 900……38 232

12 21 274…….16 490


Science:

Grade female male

10 56 888 48 814

11 20 363 41 787

12 9 789 20 490


The numbers drop sharply from grade 11 and 12 and monitoring will be done in terms of the strategies from the departmental management plan on dropout.

Skill development not aligned to our skills plan, particularly the areas of rare skills in the province.

Impress on the departments to comply with 54% quota of the Skills Development Act.

 

Girl-Child

The following programs have been identified in this financial year for monitoring:

  • Girl Education Movement
  • Dropout rates,
  • Learning materials,
  • Safety in schools,
  • Violence
   
 

Co-ordination for advocacy programs for nation building.

Women’s caravan, A launch project was very successful in Casteel over 5000 people were serviced on the 2 days

 

To have the program of providing services at every provincial event

 

Caravan stops

The following services were rendered in all the following stops Casteel, Makuya, Makhuvha, Eldorado and Kgutswane.

   
   

Birth certificates

218

 
   

Identity documents

256 new 43 reissued

 
   

SAPS certificate ID 350

Affidavit 250

600

 
   

Welfare

53

 
   

Health

238

 
   

Condoms distributed

8000

 
 

National women’s Day celebration

A very successful celebration was held where 15000 people graced the occasion. The following departments rendered services and information: Home Affairs; Local Government and Housing Office of the Premier

   
   

Health and Social Development

4 women’s projects exhibited their products and managed to make some sales.

   
 

Candlelight ceremony

A successful event co-ordinated and 7000 people were sensitized on the scourge of HIV and Aids pandemic. Beyond that birth and ID registration were done. Registration of:

Births: 19

ID’s: 42

CSG: 35

OAP: 1

   
 

16 Days of Activism

A program was developed for the 16 days and 6 districts summits were held where the following Departments made presentations on their strategies to deal with violence: Office of the Premier-OSW Justice and Constitutional Development; SAPS, Health and Social Development

Attitudes of the police, social and health workers and infrastructure were identified as stumbling blocks for women to get help.

 
 

Women’s Parley

Co-ordinated together with the Youth Commission the young women in dialogue process, the platform created a discussion on the achievements of ten years of freedom.

Engage fully the youth sector on issues of democracy; we will engage them on our conversation amongst women conferences.

 
 

Co-ordinated a media strategy.

Successfully co-ordinated media program on SABC electronic media. Different media topics on gender issues were discussed on both Thobela, MLFM and Phalaphala fm.

   

Management of the HIV and AIDS program

Development of the provincial HIV and AIDS strategy

The plan has been developed and finalised.


53 projects were funded from the Premier’s Trust Fund where monitoring is done quarterly.


South African Police Services reached 400 community members and 2 790 learners on HIV and AIDS awareness and prevention while they also distributed 71 965 condoms in the last three months.


Agriculture established one farm committee in Vhembe District and formed a partnership with the Department of Education to target farm schools.


Facilitated Partnership day at Ga- Madisha-Ditoro and made a presentation on respecting women and protecting children.

Follow-up on the PMTCT program is not satisfactory