| Presentation to Portfolio Committee on Social Development |
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And we had to take our cue, from those who manage the purse and based on that we then published, or the Minister, signed off the regulations that indicated that the Child Support Grant was going to be extended as from the 1st of January. We, therefore could not accommodate people who asked for more time, in the case of for example the Human Rights Commission for another three months, l because it would have meant that that part of the money available during the current financial year would be lost and in a sense forever children would lose out on the benefit and the opportunity to extend the benefit to children who were already on the system would have fallen away completely. So we felt we needed to move with speed and therefore 1st of January became the next date. The other concern that people raised was, if we were going to go with previous ways of formulating, under 16, under 17 and under 18; that those who would reach the age of 17, who were 16, during the course of the year, their grants again would be lapsed. So, to accommodate that or prevent the lapsing of grants, the regulations were formulated to allow the grants to continue even when children turn 17 within this calendar year. We also set a date, the 1st of October, to allow children who were born on or after 1st of October in a sense going back, but that meant amending in a sense what Cabinet had approved, but we had done this in consultation and concurrence with the National Treasury. In any case Chair, the regulations then came into effect and for those children who turn 16 as from 1st of January, they continue to stay on the system, so had the benefit of the grant. Also, in terms of the date of the 1st of October, children would have turned 17 later in the year that is October in this financial year, for them the grant would not have lapsed. In other words, we would have had 17 year old children on the system. I am sorry some of these comments are not on the slides, but I think I need to make them by way of introductory remarks so that people get a sense of the issues that we had to consider as we drafted the regulations, but I should in digression comment, our Chief Legal Services, Putsoletso Loselo who helped us formulate it. I return to the slides, as I indicated the draft regulations were prepared and it is on slide 19 of your notes. I should then say, Chair and committee members that there were several concerns raised, we believe raised with this committee, some of them raised directly with the Minister’s office, with ourselves as the policy people and some of the raised through the media to indicate that what the date of 1st October implied was that children who turned 16 before then would not qualify. Again, I should say that because means tested grants and approved progressive realization was to make sure that we could, within a limited budget we could provide grants to a limited group of people and would call for us to therefore address a further concern to before 1st of October, would in fact imply that we would move from, instead of under 16 and then another fiscal year under 17 and then under 18, that we would effectively then provide within the same fiscal year for two age cohorts. But we nevertheless raised those concerns with the Ministers who took initiative to talk to the Minister of Finance, and I should say Chair, that over the last couple of days, we have been involved in intense engagements, modeling, costing exercises, as well as looking at where savings can be generated within the system. I would therefore like to direct the Members attention to slide twenty that indicates that the regulation 6, amongst other s, determines that with effect of January a primary caregiver of a child is eligible for a Child Support Grant, if the child was born in or after 31st of December 1993. Now that is not in the regulations yet. This change is as a result of engagement, involvement and costing and up to last night there was agreement between us and the Treasury. The implication thereof is in fact that we would be going forward, we will publish the new regulations, that the Minister will shortly sign-off and we would accommodate children under 16 and under 17. The cost implications are significant. The estimate coming from the Treasury, is that it would cost another Billion rand and therefore between them and ourselves there was an intense engagement, between the Treasury, ourselves, SASSA as well as the SIU, to give effect to this new requirement. The details there are basically self explanatory, on slide 21, a child that is between 17 and 18 must be enrolled and attend school. Again, another challenging issue and I am happy to indicate that SASSA has worked around the clock to deal with the SOCPEN system, to adjust that as well as be between us provisions of children who receive the grant attend a school. Again what we have to make clear here is that the provisions are not of a punitive nature, where a child does not attend school, the grant is not going to be stopped so that the child suffers, again with the skilful use of language, as per our legal advisor, we have crafted the regulation to ensure that where a child is not attending school, based on the information received from the Department of Education, or lack of provision of information by the child caregiver then the social worker will attend to the family. Again the question has been raised that if we have such good attendance why set a condition? I can maybe again say the word condition is too strong a word, but rather a provision that provides for an incentive that caregivers ensure that their children attend school. Where children do not attend school and we do not receive the report, the intervention, by means of a social worker is to look at the situation or the conditions of the household and work so to speak, again in inverted commas, work towards getting the child back into school attendance. What this does is giving effect to the social protection framework, which Cabinet adopted in 2003 which we said that for people in poor households government wants to ensure the range of basic services, both in terms of grants and basic services and education and health care. So, without setting conditions that punish people when they do not give effect to, what one would call their responsibility and obligations, the idea is to intervene through a social work network. Regulation 6 was amended and regulation 26 has also than indicated that that date must change to 31st of December 1993. It does accommodate all the children that was born in the year of democratic freedom. We will ensure that we give effect to the envisaged changes within the next couple of days as we indicated, Chair. I will skip the terms and beneficiary numbers, except to say that the growth in beneficiary numbers within our country is unprecedented anywhere there is not a developing country at our level of income that can match the amount of resources that we spend and share GDP neither the growth over a short period of time. I will skip the impact and expenditure that I am sure the committee members are familiar with, but a point to note here is that about two to three years ago we envisaged that we would maintain the expenditure on grants as a share of GDP at more or less 3.1% to 3.4%, we are no longer able to do it in the last year or two, we have all been suffering under the financial crisis and as a result thereof the social grants expenditure would be way above that share of 3.1 to 4% and again unmatchable by any of our peers in the world.  Click here to
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Presentation to Portfolio Committee on Social Development by Minister Of Social Development and team from DoSD, on changes to Social Assistance Act Regulations & Child Support Grant extension| < Prev | Next > |
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