More children to get social grants
Thabo Mokgola
22 February 2005
The government plans to register an additional 1.2-million children between the ages of 11 and 14 for child support grants in the 2005/06 financial year.
Briefing the media in Cape Town last week, Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya said the government's primary objective was to lend a helping hand to poverty-stricken households with children.
Such children, Skweyiya said, were unable to attend school and hence had poor prospects of productive employment later in their lives - thus setting up a vicious circle of poverty.
Currently, over 5.5-million South African children benefit from social grants. In 2004, 1.9-million children under the age of 11 were registered for social grants.
In general, more than nine million South Africans receive basic social protection from the state, mainly through the social grant system. These include older people, people with disabilities and children.
Skweyiya said the government was
making significant strides in addressing the issue of grants administration, in order to deal with the fraud that has bedevilled the country's social security system.
To this end, the government had conducted an extensive data interrogation exercise through the State Information Technology Agency.
"Provincial departments have verified a number of instances of fraud, and the Special Investigations Unit, the Scorpions, the South African Police Service and the Justice Department are already pursuing a number of serious cases involving public servants and syndicates", the minister said.
Fraud and corruption is costing the government an estimated R1.5-billion per year.
Skweyiya also announced that the South African Social Security Agency would be operational from April this year.
The agency will be fully functional in three years, managing the disbursement of social grants amounting to over R60-billion a year.
Source: BuaNews
| 
