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.
April statistics were collected from Economic Development : Out of 112 tenders the following went to women
R283 203 780.72 went to women.
Public Works: Female 28 R32 805 533 Male 44 R7 279 320
Female 6 R2 492 329 Male 8 R4 127 246
Female: 2 R93 749.26 Male 3 R253 852.63
Female: 4 R224 465.74
Female 6 R30 000 000
Female 6 R314 806.00 Male 4 R228 248.00
Female 2 R74 290.30 Male 6 R341 568.87
|
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
|
Sakhasonke |
In this infrastructure development program, more than 200 people were trained and those capacitated translates into 50, 25% of women. |
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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 |
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Bicycles Projects |
150 bicycles distributed in the three districts |
Distribution in the remaining districts with 50% going to women |
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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 |
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Analyze equity status in departments |
Only two departments have not yet reached the 30% target |
Impress on the two departments to reach the target |
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Analyze and monitor social security services |
Type of grant No. as at March 2004 Number as at July 2005.
986 762 23 535 986 762 39414
|
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. |
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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:
Sport, Arts and Culture: did not even bother to give sex-disaggregated data The only department under this review that ABET PROGRAM
Grade female male 10 56 888 48 814 11 44 900……38 232 12 21 274…….16 490
Grade female male 10 56 888 48 814 11 20 363 41 787 12 9 789 20 490
|
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:
|
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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 |
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Caravan stops |
The following services were rendered in all the following stops Casteel, Makuya, Makhuvha, Eldorado and Kgutswane. |
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Birth certificates |
218 |
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Identity documents |
256 new 43 reissued |
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SAPS certificate ID 350 Affidavit 250 |
600 |
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Welfare |
53 |
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Health |
238 |
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Condoms distributed |
8000 |
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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 |
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Health and Social Development 4 women’s projects exhibited their products and managed to make some sales. |
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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 |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Management of the HIV and AIDS program |
Development of the provincial HIV and AIDS strategy |
The plan has been developed and finalised.
|
Follow-up on the PMTCT program is not satisfactory |