1. Hon.MEC, thank you for this report and your active participation in portfolio meetings.
2. Hon. members, the reduced baseline of social development to R 3, 198 billion for the 2022/2023 financial year is acknowledged given that this department is one of those in which zero-based budgeting is recommended by the Minority Front for the following reasons:
   • The department is slow at spending and filling vacant posts, bloating programme 1.
   • ECD services has moved to the Department of Education. I remind this Hon. House that ECD was fast-tracked due to the Minority Front’s motion and party debate in the 2004/2005 year. Unfortunately, it was implemented as a split programme of DSD and DOE but today its going in its entirety to where it belongs.
   •  The department is characterised annually by roll-overs, virements, shifts and appropriations.
   • There are too many indicators that do not make sense and many are not met annually.
   • Infrastructure spending is slow e.g.: the Minority Front, during the former MEC’s Thusi’s tenure in 2017/2018 started the fight for renovations to the Phoenix offices which is being renovated currently in 2022.
   • Norms and standards are still a fluid process in terms of social worker per ward and community care givers and requires monitoring.
   • There needs to be a thorough verification of the NGO database given National Treasury identifying dodgy ECD’s, reflecting weak due diligence processes.
   • Dwindling EPWP grants shows weak planning for job creation.
   • The recommendations, given these reasons, validates zero-based budgeting for DSD.
3. Furthermore, a SWOT analysis needs to be redone as ICT and crime as in vehicle hijacking, GBV, drug addiction and more, calls for serious scenario planning.
4. Programme 3 on research is not fully exploited and should focus on how DSD can be part of an integrated disaster management team with local government to manage ongoing disasters.
5. Finally, National funding shows a growing trend of increasing NGO funding which has more capacity to plan and spend on community needs.
6. The MF thanks all NGO’s who have helped during the floods and supports this budget with the above recommendations.
7. Thank you.

Hon. S. Thakur- Rajbansi