War on poverty to expand

from The Times

Government intends this year to intensify the campaign to identify specific households and individuals in dire need and to put in place interventions that will help, in the intervening period, to alleviate their plight, President Thabo Mbeki announced.

This will require a "National War Room for a War Against Poverty" bringing together government departments, provincial and local administrations, he said in his state of the nation address in Parliament on Friday.

They would work with NGOs and business to identify the interventions required in specific households and implement them as a matter of urgency, he said.

Specific priorities critical to the country’s war against poverty, in pursuit of socio-economic inclusion, would be attended to this year.

These included speeding up land and agrarian reform with detailed plans for land acquisition, better implementation of agricultural support services and household food support, and improving the capital base and reach of MAFISA agricultural financial scheme to provide micro-credit in this sector.

The focus would be on areas of large concentrations of farm dwellers and those with high eviction rates, and it was intended to increase black entrepreneurship in agricultural production by five percent a year.

The audit on land ownership would also be speeded up, Mbeki said.

Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s budget on February 20 would provide for an increase in the social grant system by equalising the age of eligibility at 60, thus benefiting about half a million men.

Efforts already started to scale up assistance to co-operatives and small enterprises, especially those involving women, would be intensified.

The emphasis would be on providing training and markets, including linking them up with established outlets.

Among other things, the National Youth Service programme would be scaled up, including a graduated increase of the intake in the military skills development programme of the SA National Defence Force from the current 4000 to 10,000.

R700 million had already been given to the SANDF to start scaling up this programme.

The Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) which, by surpassing the set targets, has shown potential to absorb more entrants, would also be intensified.

This would include increased intake of young people in the programme to maintain public infrastructure, doubling the number of children enrolled in Early Childhood Development to over 600,000 through 1000 new sites with more than 3500 practitioners trained and employed, and increasing the number of care-givers.

About R1 billion over baseline would be allocated to programmes falling within the EPWP.

Finally, the system of products for preferential procurement by government from small, medium and micro-enterprises would be introduced.

The Small Enterprises Development Agency would set up a rigorous system to ensure that the 30-day payment period was observed, Mbeki said.