Thank you very much, hon Chair. I have no doubt the hon member must have been a negotiator before. He is negotiating on behalf of the Pietermaritzburg Pensioners Forum. I am promising him that I remain available for any negotiations. Unfortunately, it is difficult for me to negotiate in a legal
Chamber like this because I will just be tying myself in knots. But I am willing to pursue this matter outside the Chamber.
You see, if I can say that we are going to adjust the pension by a certain amount and it turns out that by February we do not have the revenue, someone will consult Hansard and remind me that on 27 November I said that I am going to increase the social grant amount - or I promised that I am definitely going to increase it - and if I am unable to do so, I am going to be burned at the stake.
All I can say is that I am extremely sensitive to the plight of our pensioners, and we must at all times seek to look after our old-age pensioners and seek to make sure that our sense of solidarity in our society continues. It is not only the Pietermaritzburg Pensioners Forum that has approached us, there are many others who have also made submissions - maybe not to you who are here, but directly to the Ministry of Finance.
There are also legacy issues that we are dealing with - for example, the Venda pensioners whom we have to attend to their issues. There are military veterans, some of whom have not received their pensions which were due, and so on. The whole system needs to be carefully worked on to make sure that we do not leave anybody not taken care
of within a highly constrained fiscal environment. That is all what I can say for now, but I am quite certain that as usual, in February, we will be able to say something - which I don't what that is, but I am sure we will say something in February.