Debate on the Social Development Budget

Posted in: on 21/05/2021 | Categorised as

  1. The MF thanks the Hon. MEC on taking action on matters raised.
  2. The MF welcomes that the ECD programme will now be moving to the Department of Education where it belongs. In 2004 when I pursued the importance of ECD in our schooling system as a seamless integration of education, I was comforted that by 2009 and 2014 Grade R and RR became a reality. It was only the home-based crèches that still needed to be formalised. This Hon House will bear testimony in the outer years on the impact this positive move will have on South Africa’s HDI level improvement.
  3. This move will transfer budgets too, hence the MF wants to ensure that another hugely neglected programme in DSD has been Community Development and research which is critical to our use of evidence-based research, not only for population numbers but also for classifying social issues and their true status with credible data collection. Investing in Programme 5 will also assist the various M+E departments for reliable mentoring and evaluation reports. More importantly, clean data will ensure that appropriate useful indicators are targeted and used in various departmental APP’s.
  4. The MF was satisfied with the outcomes of the recently held workshop which has pushed decision-making in terms of current investigations, programme shifts and strengthening.
  5. The MF has noted with concern the drop in the NGO budgets but simultaneously believes that NGO’s must be guided as to serving the critical emerging needs of our people. Social equity rather than social equality is the need of the hour. Therefore, until COVID-19 resolves itself, the government must continue giving various grants like the SRD.
  6. The Minority Front supports the budget of R3,698,571 for Vote 13.
  7.  Thank you.

Hon. S. Thakur-Rajbansi

DETAILS

Debated by: Hon. Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi

Minority Front Leader (KZN Legislature)

Date: Thu 20 May 2021

Time: 09:30 to 17:00

Word Count: 291 Words

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