SOCIAL CLUSTER 2 MEDIA BRIEFING

PARLIAMENT, CAPE TOWN, 15 FEBRUARY 2007

THEME: SECOND ECONOMY INTERVENTIONS AND POVERTY ALLEVIA TION

Ladies and gentlemen,

Welcome to the Social Cluster 2 briefing session which

focuses on poverty alleviation and second economy interventions.

As outlined in the State of the Nation Address, we will intensify our programmes with the objective of eradicating poverty and creating employment.

The Cluster programme of action will have an added emphasis on improving the ability of the poor to access government services. These include comprehensive social security, integrated food security and land reform and the

Expanded Public Works Programme, including job creation and early childhood development. We will deal with these issues in this briefing.

1. COMPREHENSIVE SOCIAL SECURITY

We have made substantial progress on Pillar one of our social protection system which includes the extension of social assistance and enhancement of the social wage. To date 11.8 million South Africans receive income support, of which 8.2 million beneficiaries are children.

We will this year conduct extensive work on social security reform, especially to develop Pillar 2, the contributory or social insurance pillar.

The expectations are that those who are employed should save part of their income, and contribute to social solidarity measures to protect themselves and their families from unemployment, illness, disability or old age. Government must set up this arrangement to act as underwriter as individuals and society often bear the risks of failures.

The social sector is currently reviewing various measures to support children over the age of 14 years. These will include nutrition, education, health, welfare services and income support. A progress report detailing options will be finalised by mid-year.

We will implement a number of projects to improve the integrity of the social grants administration system, as well as its management, accountability and effectiveness.

This will include amongst other measures, ensuring that temporary disability grants are lapsed when due, improved compliance is ensured by application of means tests, that foster care grants are reviewed and that fraud is prevented, detected and acted upon.

There is continuous progress on the anti-fraud campaign. Since the inception of the second phase of the investigation, focusing on non-public servants, over 200 000 grants have either been cancelled or lapsed due to non-collection. In addition, the Special Investigating Unit has identified more than 10 000 cases for prosecution and civil recovery.

Action against public servants will continue. Close to six thousand have started paying back R 5 million that they owe as proceeds of crime, and 2 000 are to face disciplinary action, while investigations and prosecutions are ongoing against others.

2. INTEGRA TED FOOD SECURITY AND LAND REFORM

The President noted the need to put in extra effort in dealing with remaining land restitution cases, many of which are much more complex. In this regard, we will seek to finalise outstanding rural land claims. Most of the urban claimants have opted for financial compensation, to the value of R3.8 billion. We are now left with about six thousand rural land claims, which we must settle by the year 2008.

These outstanding claims include those in forestry, conservation, land with mining rights as well as large sugar and tea estates.

Various mechanisms have been put in place to speed up land redistribution. We will continue the implementation of the Pro-active Land Acquisition Strategy to acquire the 30% of agricultural and other land for the reform programme. A Special Purpose Vehicle that will acquire, hold, manage, develop and dispose of land for all land reform purposes will be set up. The purpose will be to accelerate acquisition of land for all land reform purposes such as agricultural development, settlement, industrial and commercial purposes.

Negotiations will be conducted in cases where there are disputes with landowners with regard to issues of validity of claims or value of land. The negotiations period will be shortened to six months; where-after expropriation or referral to the Land Claims Court will be considered.

We will continue working on the Expropriation Amendment Bill aimed at addressing issues of expropriation procedure and compensation.

On food security, the Agricultural Starter Pack Programme, aimed at moving people out of the Food Parcel Scheme by growing own food, is also to be continued.

A total of 66 364 beneficiaries have been reached through the programme in all provinces. Also continuing is the provision of financing for emerging farmers. To date, loans of up to R24.4 million have been disbursed to 848 successful applicants.

The AgriBEE Charter is to be gazetted soon. A Baseline Study has been commissioned to provide empirical data for targets, weightings and indicators. The study will be concluded in May 2007.

3. SECOND ECONOMY INTERVENTIONS: SOCIAL ASPECTS OF THE EXPANDED PUBLIC WORKS PROGRAMME

There are a number of initiatives underway to ensure that the outputs of the EPWP are increased so that the impact of the programme is enhanced, as per the President's directive in the State of the Nation address.

There are increased allocations of R3 billion over the Medium Term Expenditure Framework, to provincial roads departments through the Provincial Infrastructure Grant. The objective is to increase their labour-intensive construction and maintenance activities. These activities will focus on the access roads in the provinces as this category of roads is currently under funded, and is amenable to the use of labour-intensive maintenance and construction activities.

All provinces have developed business plans for the next three years for this scaling up and are ready to commence implementation in the new financial year.

The Department of Public Works in partnership with the Business Trust Expanded Public Works Support Programme are rolling out a comprehensive technical support strategy to assist 45 key municipalities with the implementation of the EPWP.

The EPWP will also focus on the roll-out of Early Childhood Development and Home Based Care programmes. These programmes do not only focus on providing work opportunities for volunteers in the sector, but also on providing skills training to further formalise care in the sector. The ECD programme is also a child protection mechanism as it is easy to detect abuse amongst children attending ECD centres.

We have developed a methodology to increase the size of the EPWP projects. This will increase the impact by lengthening the duration of employment and well as enabling longer periods for training to be provided to EPWP beneficiaries. This methodology is being tested in e Thekwini on some of the large scale projects being undertaken there.

We have identified projects in the Free State, Western Cape, Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng where youth will be employed in the maintenance and rehabilitation of public buildings. Further work will be done to identify the next batch of projects to ensure that the target of 5 000 youth as set by the President is met.

Furthermore, all provincial Public works departments are to engage 5 000 youths each in the maintenance of the assets they are responsible for.

All the provinces are currently finalising the identification of the projects that will be made part of the National Youth Service in the coming financial year.

CONCLUSION

The Social Sector will continue its work on the priorities identified in 2006, while intensifying programmes aimed at alleviating poverty and improving access to opportunities for all as identified in the 2007 State of the Nation address.

I thank you.