Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the Provincial Parliament
The Premier, Honourable Ebrahim Rasool
My Colleagues in Cabinet
Honourable Leader of the Opposition
Honourable Leaders of political parties
Honourable Members
Director-General and staff
Community Leaders
Distinguished guests
Members of Non-Governmental Organisations in the Welfare fraternity
Comrades and Friends

For the first time in history, our province, the Western Cape, is no longer a political island. On 14 April 2004 the diverse masses and people of our country descended on the polling stations and gave our organisation, the African National Congress, a landslide victory, mandating us to continue the good work of providing a Better Life For All South Africans.

Similarly, the people of the Western Cape gave the ANC a majority mandate to enter into a contract with them to Create Work And Fight Poverty.

However, we are also confronted with the main challenge of speeding up the transformation of our social and economic institutions, the strategic objective of which is pushing back the frontiers of poverty, as we continue our goal of providing a Home for All in the Western Cape Province.

The Premier, in his State of the Province address on 28 May 2004, highlighted the realities of unemployment, inequality and impoverishment of too many of our people. These realities stand in our way of creating social cohesion as we have been mandated to do by the President of the country, Honourable Thabo Mbeki.

As a point of departure, the Department of Social Services and Poverty Alleviation, working closely with its counterparts in Health, Home Affairs and others, must work hard in ensuring that the ills caused by centuries of apartheid rule are eradicated from our society.

As we decisively move forward towards the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment in our province, we need to invest in the collective commitment of our people to achieve a Better Life For All. As we strengthen Social capital, which in its most simplistic form refers to the "glue that holds a society together". The central themes that run through all the definitions of social capital acknowledge relationships or connections between individuals, social networks, societal norms, reciprocity and the trustworthiness that arise from these networks.

This will be realised by the involvement of all the social sectors of our people, acting in unison towards a common goal. The central desire is the reduction of the number of people dependent on social grants. The Department of Social Services and Poverty Alleviation alone cannot achieve this enormous challenge.

The budget allocated to our department for this current financial year stands at R4,93 billion, which constitutes an increase of R667,336 million - 17,44% - from the previous financial year. Social security constitutes 85.24% of the provincial welfare allocation.

Central to the challenges facing the reconstruction and development of our society is our commitment to Community Regeneration. We can only achieve this regeneration of communities when our interventions touch upon each and every facet of the development of a human being. It is against this background Mr Speaker, that our department is involved in nurturing Early Childhood Development.

The lack of suitable facilities, shortage of resources, absence of trained and qualified ECD educators continue to characterise the day-to-day running of child care centres around our province. The absence of adequate, formal ECD centres has led to many children being cared for by informal day-care givers. To this end, we have increased the number of ECD facilities we are assisting from 12 000 in 1996 to 50 000 at present. We will continue to expand our reach to other needy areas. Our responsibility does not end here.

As a starting point, we are also consulting with individual experts from institutions of higher learning, the private sector and individuals in transforming and rationalising the ECD sector in our province. We need to socialise South Africans into our new democratic and non-racial values at a very young age.

As we speak, the Ministry has commissioned a study to look at how to formalise this sector, and address the social, political and economic imbalances of the past. These will focus on the following three terms of reference:

1. Identify all informal and semiformal ECD centres in various communities. Assess them and identify what type of support they need for them to develop into fully-fledged ECD centres.
2. Identify training needs and guidelines for the development of skills in early childhood development work.
3. Set clear targets to ensure family support and the development of good, quality child care in the community and create networks capable of supporting and developing the more marginal child-care facilities.
4. Monitor progress and the correct use of departmental resources by the funded facilities, while ensuring that many pre-schools are brought to standard in preparing children for school-readiness.

The Department will also discuss, with its counterparts in Education, the possibility of introducing a formal qualification and comprehensive training programme for mothers and crèche teachers in both the informal and formal sectors. As a result, we are looking at aligning the proposed qualification with the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) accreditation requirements.

Furthermore, our department has set aside an additional R887 700 for the establishment of 15 appropriate day care centres for 807 children living on farms in our province.

As part of the Extended Public Works Programme, an amount of R1 million has been set aside for the funding of 200 Early Childhood Development Centre practitioner learnerships.

As we know, children are exposed to many sorts of vulnerabilities, we are going to forge partnerships with relevant authorities such as police and NGO's to protect our children. Programmes at ECD centres should make provision for the psychological effects and trauma experienced by abused children. During this financial year, we will interact with our counterparts in the local government level to determine the kind of joint intervention we can make in the ECD area.

At the launch of the Child Protection Month in De Noon three weeks ago, parents appealed to government to intensify our campaign aimed at ensuring that the girl child is safe from abuse.

In response to the cry of our communities, the following child protection programmes are in place and will be strengthened to ensure effectiveness:

1. Child Protection Register. The Department is currently working on two pilot sites in Mitchell's Plain and Atlantis. Communities are urged to work with our District Offices to establish their own registers in their areas.
2. After-hour services for abused and neglected children. These services were established to create speedy response to the plight of children vulnerable to societal abuse. In this service, social workers and other relevant role players are immediately available on demand. Communities are further urged to get the necessary information from our district offices.

In collaboration with the departments of health and education, we will continue to monitor the impact of school feeding schemes in reducing child hunger. We also noted with concern that our province has the majority of children in conflict with the law. In this regard, we are already interacting with the department of justice and NGO's in this field to address the problem. We will also endeavour to ensure that children in conflict with the law are able to access social interventions within 48 hours of their arrest. Together with the Department of Community Safety we will proactively identify critical areas from which youth crime emanates with the aim of tailoring social interventions.

As we continue to regenerate our communities, this department cannot be silent in addressing the general problems affecting young people in our province. We welcome the announcement made by the Premier for the establishment of the Youth Commission in order to sensitise government on the broader needs and aspirations of young people. Youth encounter horrific experiences on a daily basis. These include HIV and AIDS, STI's, ganstarism, substance abuse, school drop-outs and unemployment. A number of activities and programmes are in the pipeline to respond to this challenge. A partnership with the City of Cape Town will also revitalize the street children project for which R2m has been set aside.

Our efforts include youth projects such as the Ukuthwalana Youth Development Project in Worcester (a skills development programme) and the Wolwekloof People's Academy For Community Development. This is a partnership with the Boland District Municipality. The department for this project has set aside a total of R2 million.

The Ministry will continue to engage other municipalities, including the Mayor of the Unicity, in signing co-operation agreements to address developmental needs of the youth.

The Department has also conducted a comprehensive review of substance abuse among our children and youth. As a result, we are establishing closer liaison with the Central Drug Authority. The challenge here is to establish a balance between the actions that bring about a decrease in the availability of drugs (control and law enforcement) and the demand for drugs (prevention, treatment and rehabilitation). In addition to our current intervention in this area, we have commissioned a task group within the Department to establish a Youth Substance Abuse Treatment Centre in the southern suburbs. Our current budget for substance abuse stands at R8,2 million.

We will further strengthen programmes focusing on teenage awareness. This will give effect to the partnership between the Universities of Western Cape and California, aimed at seeking an alternative approach to the treatment of substance abusers at our De Novo Treatment Centre.

Our challenge of regenerating our communities cannot be completely realised without addressing the needs of our people with disabilities and the terminally ill. Although the desires of our communities are to give home based care for these categories of our people, the challenges posed by work demands, make it impossible for many to achieve this noble desire. In order to assist those who cannot be cared for at their homes, our department will investigate the possibility of providing such facilities through public-private partnerships in some of the areas where they never existed. By so doing, we will be giving dignity and respect to those who cannot fend for themselves because they are terminally ill or have disabilities.

In line with our commitment to the moral regeneration of our society, we will pay special attention to the living conditions of our grannies and grandfathers in our centres for the aged. The principles of Ubuntu and Batho Pele will define the behaviour of our caregivers in these institutions to ensure that our elderly receive the respect and dignity they so deserve.

In order to deal with both the shortages of these facilities in historically disadvantaged communities, as well as the cultural diversity thereof, the relevant directorate within our Department has been commissioned to investigate the possibility of establishing day-care centres, using existing facilities, in the most needy areas.

The budget for the aged and war veterans now stands at R1.42 billion, up from R1.32 billion in the previous financial year. With these grants, we will alleviate the plight of more than 160 429 beneficiaries a month. In order to improve service delivery, the Department and Allpay identified 35 pay points where a special pay day was created for the elderly only. This has alleviated the long queues at pay-points. Our elderly are now treated with respected and dignity, and where this is not happening we call on or communities to report to us. We have further committed our department to conduct an educational programme on this matter, to educate the elderly about their rights.

The Department of Social Services has further allocated R1.15 million to the 157 registered Service Centres for the Aged, which are currently home 11 632 people.

Mr Speaker, as we celebrate 10 Years of Democracy and freedom this year, unfortunately for us, the institutionalisation of the system of racial discrimination and apartheid exploitation in South Africa destroyed the family life of the majority of South Africans. In that destruction of family values, Africans were the most affected, particularly through the migrant labour policies and other oppressive laws.

HIV and AIDS continue to disrupt the well-being of many families. The number of people infected and affected continues to be the source of concern for our department. As the phenomenon of the households headed by children because of HIV, AIDS and other diseases becomes a common factor, we are going to influence the National Department of Social Development to look at mechanisms to assist children falling through legislation gaps, and cannot access the Child Support Grant. These are the 17 year olds, who are too old for CSG but too young to qualify for foster care.

Crime, substance abuse, gender violence, child abuse and neglect play a major role in the destruction of family life and well-being. We will continue to fund developmental programmes aimed at arresting this problem.

This department therefore needs to start from the beginning and help to restore family values, which ensure that my neighbour will never go hungry while I have the means. We need to restore family values that encourage sharing, respect and helpfulness. Together with the communities this department is developing a Three Year Family Programme to assist families to cope with the difficulties of life. R500 000 has been set aside for this goal.

To further strengthen our commitment to Community Regeneration, developmental workers will be employed in all the departmental districts of the province to help the social upliftment of communities. As we celebrate this International Year of the Family, comprehensive programmes aimed at supporting families will be developed. Consistent with our focus to build social capital, all the social sectors forming a family unit will receive the full attention and priority of our department in this financial year.

Strengthening and building social capital constitutes the first strategic thrust of the department's strategic direction for the next financial year.

Mr Speaker, it is our fundamental and basic conviction that Poverty Reduction can only be achieved through strategic relationships, ranging from intergovernmental projects, to working with the broader South African Society. Any government that thinks it can stand alone in fighting poverty and improving the lives of its citizens commits a cardinal mistake.

This week we held successful discussions with prominent members of the private sector and they fully support our vision of strengthening public-private partnerships in reducing poverty. Subsequently, the Ministry is in the process of forming a five-member Working Group, which will take the process forward.
Also within six months of this budget vote, we will develop a framework for the identification of strategic partners who will work with us to identify other progressive sources of livelihood for the needy communities. In this regard, we hope to identify, together with communities, sustainable projects, which can be funded in partnership with them, to provide some level of employment to people while benefiting the communities themselves.

The success of these community projects will also depend on the clearly defined co-operation between our Department and the Department of Public Works and Transport, through its Extended Public Works Programme. These two departments will interact more closely to assist poverty reduction initiatives. In order for the interventions of the two departments to make the most impact, in reducing poverty, the lower sphere of government will be encouraged to incorporate poverty reduction strategies in their municipal Integrated Development Plans. We are proud to announce that our Department is currently taking in the three-day Poverty Reduction Conference, organised by the City of Cape Town.

More specifically, our Department, through its Poverty Reduction Programme, will be working with communities around the province to establish revenue-generating projects. These will promote fields such as community gardening, sewing, knitting and textile handwork. Further, we will be establishing networks for communities with our partners in the private and NGO sectors in identifying markets for these community projects.

When the community projects are identified with our partners, we will recruit suitable volunteers and provide the necessary skills required in order for them to be able to dispose of the task at hand. In that process a new sense of patriotism will be created to our people. They will give meaning to the Xhosa expression, umntu ngumntu ngabantu.

Mr Speaker, to us community regeneration means the involvement of different communities in all the progressive methods of reducing dependency on the government and encourage community self-reliance. To this end, our department will begin the interaction with different community saving schemes to investigate what kind of partnerships we can forge with them. Before the end of this financial year, we will create a database of the existing community saving schemes. On receipt of the database, we hope to evaluate it and ascertain what kind of financial and non-financial support we can extend to them.

Mr Speaker, the programmes and interventions we have outlined above are in line with the goals contained within our Vision 2014, as presented by our National Minister, the Honourable Zola Skweyiya, during his budget vote last week. They include:

• Contributing to reducing unemployment through sustainable community livelihoods
• Contributing to reducing poverty through comprehensive social security, and improved household and community assets.
• Providing skills, building capacity and providing resources to encourage self-employment.
• Ensuring that all South Africans, especially the poor and those at risk - children, youth, women, the aged, and people with disabilities - are able fully to exercise their constitutional rights and enjoy the full dignity of freedom.
• Ensuring compassionate public service to the people; that national, provincial and local officials are accessible; and that citizens know their rights and insist on fair treatment and efficient services.
• Contributing to reducing malnutrition and turning the tide against HIV and AIDS.
• Contributing to building a society that can actively challenge crime and corruption and that promotes programmes that address the social roots of criminality.
• Contributing to building a South Africa that is growing, prospering and benefiting all South Africans, especially the poor.

In order to achieve the above goals, our consultations and co-operation local government and stakeholders should culminate in the provincial poverty reduction strategy and policy. The draft framework will be presented to the provincial Cabinet during June 2004. A stakeholder mobilization strategy and plan will be finalized during July 2004.

Mr Speaker, a survey conducted in the twelve magisterial districts found that close to a quarter of households were borrowing money to service their debt. This research also revealed the degree to which beneficiaries are trapped in the vicious debt cycle perpetuated by "loan sharks". Working closely with law enforcement agencies, we are looking at legal ways of protecting beneficiaries from this problem.

Our department also commissioned a study to assess the impact caused by gambling on beneficiaries, subsequently, a report will be finalised within a month.

We have also established partnerships with NGOs to educate beneficiaries on debt counselling, debt management and financial education. We are developing a strategy to protect social grant beneficiaries against exploitation by money-lenders. We are also educating them about the illegality of using their own grants as guarantee to obtain loans from money-lenders.

Part of our government's strategic objective is ensuring that every deserving South African citizen is in possession of a legal and proper identity document in order to gain easy access to social grants. Once again, ours is to further ensure that every child is entitled to the CSG without any bureaucratic glitches. It is for this reason that we encourage mothers to secure birth certificates for their children.

To deal with the tremendous influx of applications we have established a task team to fast-track the processing of applications and, in this regard, a centralised venue was set up in Mowbray. The proposed door-to-door campaign will augment progress in these applications.

Once again, under the leadership of the ANC government, the Department of Social Services is accelerating the provision of social grants to communities in our province. As we speak, pension and social grants increased from 318 155 in April 2001 to 578 643 in April 2004. Assisted by the forthcoming door-to-door campaign and our continued interaction with communities, we hope to register in excess of 660 000 beneficiaries by the end of the 2004/2005 financial year.

The Department will continue to ensure that those children eligible for grants are registered as beneficiaries. Our assessment indicates that there is a large number of children, including those in rural and farming areas, who are not recipients of grants.

In line with the national commitment to register 900 000 children under eleven years old, our ministry is faced with the task of registering more than 93 929 children who are supposed to benefit from the Child Support Grant but are not yet enjoying this Constitutional right. We have allocated R190 134 000 for this purpose.

Over the past few weeks, our provincial government, under the leadership of the Premier, held a successful Cabinet Lekgotla, where we identified a number of deliverables to be achieved within our First 100-days in Cabinet. This august gathering further adopted the Ikapa Elihlumayo principle, our multifaceted approach to development in ensuring that the Western Cape truly becomes a Home For All Its people.

To give meaning to the resolutions of the Lekgotla, on 28 June 2004, our department will embark on a door-to-door campaign to the poorest and the most remote communities of our province. We are proud to announce, Mr Speaker, that during this campaign our colleagues from national government, the Minister of Public Service and Administration, the Honourable Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, and Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, the Honourable Malusi Gigaba will join us. We would like to appeal to other political parties to join hands with us and make this campaign a resounding success.

Significant guiding objectives of the campaign include:

• Taking service delivery to the people
• Creating community awareness on programmes offered by our department and ministry
• Taking new applications for social security and other relevant grants
• Identifying problems faced by communities in accessing services
• Building a good relationship between government and communities
• Identifying obstacles hindering social service delivery
• Registering all unregistered and qualifying grant applicants for services offered by our department

The campaign will cover all municipal districts of our province. To ensure the success of the campaign, the ministry of social services will work very closely with the communities involved in identifying social problems confronting our people.

As we continue with these programmes, we are guided by our defined commitment to ensure that the People's Contract To Create Work and Fight Poverty is a success.

The budget for disability has increased from R1.197 billion to R1.335 billion. Mr Speaker, we are delighted to also mention at this stage that our department has tightened up control of this budget considerably. We are fully committed to providing effective service to our disabled.A total of R267.7 million has been set aside to fund social welfare organisations dealing with substance abuse, crime prevention, care for the aged and disabled and child and family care. Mr Speaker, these are transfer funds to our social service delivery organisations.

Our department is also working very closely with our counterparts in Home Affairs and Health. The three main glitches in securing grants are birth certificates, medical certificates and Identity Documents. Whilst recipients of social grants are required by law to be in possession of a proper legal document before being issued with a grant, those applying for disability need to have a medical certificate confirm by a state doctor. But due to the shortage of doctors, this has led to a serious backlog. In consultation with the Department of Health the department will be appointing a panel of doctors and occupational therapists to fast-track this process.

Mr Speaker, an amount of R1.92 million has been allocated to assist 400 learners at twenty sites conducting the Home and Community-based care programme, which will be rolled out in 12 areas around the province. We have allocated a further R12 million for the care and support of the chronically and terminally ill patients.An amount of R1.35 billion has been allocated for the payment of disability grants to eligible beneficiaries.

In the past few weeks we saw the Minister, Dr Skweyiya, launch the South African National Social Security Agency, whose main brief will be clamping down on corruption and maladministration in the issuing of social grants.

Statistics released by the national department of Social Development recently reveal that crime and corruption cost the tax payer more than R1, 5 billion each year. This, Mr Speaker, is money intended for social grant recipients. The agency's main objective is to increase the efficiency levels of service delivery in the distribution of social security grants.

On its part, our department is working very closely with the police in rooting out corruption. We have a number of cases where some beneficiaries fraudulently claimed social grants. In this regard, we will co-operate with the law enforcement agencies to ensure that the law takes its course. We also welcome the support we have received from the honourable members of the House in dealing with corruption.

Our department is currently involved in another campaign of visiting our provincial district offices to speak to staff in ensuring that our guiding principle, Batho Pele, is a reality. In order to inculcate a culture of caring and love for the communities we are serving, all the staff in our department are undergoing thorough training and orientation programmes on effective customer care. Mr Speaker, the main brief of our ministry is the integration and protection of the most vulnerable sectors of our society, the elderly, women, the disabled and people living in rural areas.

We are fully aware of the difficult conditions under which social workers toil. We welcome the announcement by the National Minister on the proposed improvement of the service conditions of this category of professionals. We commend those employees who go an extra mile in providing an excellent service to our community.

Our department is also confronted with the major challenge of speeding up the transformation of all institutions dealing with social welfare as we continue our goal of creating a Better Life for All.

Mr Speaker, during this financial year, our department will also accelerate initiatives to bring about the transformation of the social delivery services. At the centre of our transformation plan is the urgency of meeting the needs of the most vulnerable groups in communities. As a result, the department's Poverty Map is a significant guiding tool in locating communities most ravaged by poverty. The current poverty pockets, drawn from Census 2001, need a serious re-look for the Western Cape. We are concerned that the majority of communities we know to be very poor, do not appear as such on these maps.
In order to address this anomaly, the relevant directorate will conduct an internal investigation to assess the plight of the needy communities not given priority by the maps.

Our Monitoring and Evaluation section is geared towards establishing departmental benchmarks for service provision within vulnerable communities. We are duty-bound to deliver service that is equitable, appropriate and accessible, while ensuring efficiency and cost effectiveness.

We acknowledge and welcome the good work done by NGOs in the social welfare field. Our transformation agenda will further be communicated to all our funded organisations. We will assess funded organisations to establish their degree of alignment with our transformation agenda. Our government will not hesitate to review funding from these untransforming organisations and redirect it to organisations that share our broader vision of building a non-racial society, whilst addressing the imbalances of the past.

This perceived unwillingness and slowness of pace of transformation by the majority of the funded organisations speaks to their inability to create a "home for all in the province".

Mr Speaker, to ensure that our valuable partner funding reaches the most vulnerable and poorest communities in the areas where our partners operate, we are currently registering all informal (unregistered) organisations so that they can benefit from partnerships and networks.
Government is also strengthening partnerships that add value to our vision, mission and the department's core business - improving the lives of our people.

Mr Speaker, to ensure effective service delivery and transformation, the department will accelerate the pace of assessing all the 1,300 funded organisations in the province. A report will be available within six months in this regard.

AS we carry the above tasks, we need to increase the capacity of our human resources to respond to the needs of the province. In this regard, we will work with the labour movement and other stakeholders to change the current complexion of the Department of Social Services and Poverty Alleviation. The ultimate objective will be to attain employment equity with a proper gender and racial balance. We hope to achieve this noble objective in September 2006. Periodic progress reports will be given to Cabinet in this regard.

In line with set national objectives regarding the increase of the skills levels of our population, our department will interact with the relevant Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETA's) in order to establish our first learnership programme before 1 April 2005.

As we wield a transformation stick forcing our funded organisations to transform, we also want to lead by example and transform our own internal administration. In this regard, we are going to increase the participation of Historically Disadvantaged Institutions in our procurement process to 50% both in number and in value. For example, in the previous financial year, the participation of Historically Disadvantaged Individuals stood at about 37% of the tenders awarded, but only 7% of the total value in money terms went to HDI's. All racial groups within our HDI's will benefit.

Mr Speaker, let us mention here that under the skilful and rich leadership of our National Minister, Honourable Zola Skweyiya, we are extremely confident that the challenges and mammoth task of reversing the ills caused by centuries of apartheid rule and degradation will be overcome.

We cannot betray the trust and confidence bestowed upon us by the millions of South Africans at the recent polls. The imperatives and fundamentals are in place and the road ahead is clear and beckoning.

We are not afraid; we will rise to the challenge and build a people's contract to strengthen families and communities for a better life for all.