Chairperson, according to the World Health Organisation, even though there is enough food in the world to feed everyone, one person dies from starvation every 3,6 seconds.
The 2005 UN Human Development Report records that 5 million people in South Africa survive on less than R6 per day and that South Africa ranks 56th out of 103 in the world poverty rankings, with a human poverty index of 30,9% or 14,5 million people.
These are very real people and not just statistics, like the granny from Ngcobo in the Eastern Cape, where her meagre grant goes to community education needs while government fails to provide even the most basic services in that community. Provision of basic services should be a given.
Acknowledging the chronic poverty problem in South Africa is, however, a start, and recognising that working is key to changing the situation has us at least facing in the right direction together. Government's five-year R400 billion public works programme follows through on this thought and is likely to succeed to some degree.
An amount of R400 billion could, for example, pay 7,8 million unemployed South Africans R855 per month for five years. But, of course, wages are not all that is budgeted for and a large percentage will be spent on capital assets.
Labour unions which represent the employed and not the unemployed are, unfortunately, not helping as they naturally continue to maximise benefits for their members, diminishing employment opportunities for the unemployed in the process. At the same time strained employer-employee labour relations further exacerbate the situation and escalate the move to a greater degree of automation in modern production methods, resulting in fewer jobs. Yes, we must work together.
Unless we are able to turn our employment problem around, the poverty trap will become more and more difficult to get out of, with the gap between the rich and the poor widening, the poor becoming isolated and demoralised, moral values changing daily and ethnic divisions increasing.
According to the UN Bulgarian Human Development Report, suicide, child abuse, domestic violence, broken homes and homelessness are typical of the more complicated and consequent social and economic problems in society. The bigger the unemployment problem is, and the longer it remains, the worse it is. We must work together. [Time expired.]