Hon Deputy Chairperson, hon Minister Bathabile Dlamini, Deputy Minister Mme MaNtuli, colleagues from different provinces, Members of this Parliament, the National Council of Provinces, director- general, distinguished guests, whenever one speaks about social development, what immediately comes to mind is the eradication of poverty, hunger and underdevelopment and the elimination of various social ills that continue to plague our communities.
In this regard, it is important that at all levels of our society we build an enduring and lasting partnership with our social partners to ensure that development is a vision that we are committed to and that we will tackle the urgent challenges that have been identified by the Minister during her budget presentation, which I am here to support.
Our commitment to providing comprehensive and integrated social development services to our people is unshakable. However, we have identified the shortage of social and development workers as a serious challenge that can cause us to fail. In this regard, in Limpopo province, we have allocated bursaries to 939 deserving learners to pursue a qualification in the above- mentioned professions. We are proud to say that 374 of the bursary holders have been placed in the department with effect from 1 April. We can only hope that the remaining students will pass and come and deal with the challenges that we are faced with.
As we continue to implement our programmes, the department has assisted poverty-stricken families, particularly children, to come and train and be candidates for auxiliary social work services. We are doing this to make sure that we build capacity for government to be able to provide social services to our people. This financial year we have enlisted a total of 250 auxiliary social service candidates as part of our contribution to job creation and the fight against poverty and hunger.
We are aware that the buzz word is sustainability when it comes to interventions to propel our people out of poverty. The poor require sustainable relief. In this regard, as opposed to funding projects aimlessly, in Limpopo we have identified several potential projects that could grow into serious players, particularly in the local economy, as candidates for becoming balanced social relief and sustainability projects.
Our plans are at an advanced stage and discussions are going on with the Department of Economic Development to assist these projects to be enlisted and established as co-operatives.
On the other hand, we are having discussions with various government institutions, such as the Department of Basic Education, the SA Police Service and the Department of Correctional Services, asking them to procure goods and services from these projects, with the Department of Health as an anchor department. There is no reason why we cannot purchase bread from local bakeries, or buy vegetables from social-relief gardens and chicken from poultry houses which are just around the corner, as these projects are funded by the Department of Social Development.
Most importantly, there are very many seamstresses to whom the department has given sewing machines and these seamstresses and their machines are idling and being underutilised. The Department of Health, as an anchor department, will make sure that those women use their machines to mend linen from various hospitals. The Department of Social Development has also made a commitment that, seeing as we are busy buying uniforms for various schools, we will buy from these women.
We will not win the war against poverty unless we tackle the social ills that face our society head-on. The challenge of teenage pregnancy is real and continues to be a strain, particularly on social services to our people. Hon members will remember that a few months ago Mavalani High School near Giyani in Limpopo made headlines for the not-so-good reason of having 57 learners pregnant in February.
Reasons for this eventuality are many and varied - from economic reasons to peer pressure and family pressure, to name but a few. We believe that the department has made inroads in working with the community to make sure that we deal with this scourge. Together with the Departments of Basic Education and Health we are making serious inroads to ensure that some of the challenges are being tackled.
Our interventions include, but are not limited to, the provision of social work services to different schools in the area; the implementation of school health; and strengthening advocacy and launching campaigns in relation to drugs, alcohol and substance abuse. We are also planning our mini drug summit for the month of July.
When we were interacting with learners and young women in that particular area, some of them raised the issue that some people see them as very vulnerable and take advantage of them. Some of them indicated that they bunk school at least once a month because they are unable to buy sanitary towels, and that this sometimes leads to them being abused. In this regard we have mobilised our communities and companies to donate to the programme that we are running, together with several municipalities, to distribute sanitary towels to the needy, so that our young women and girls are able to go to school every day of the month.
We have also embarked on the roll-out of a massive school uniform project in all our districts, as we remain convinced that education is a precondition for a nation to develop.
The funding of nongovernmental and nonprofit organisations remains a challenge and a great concern as we are unable to fund even those organisations that are doing a great job in our rural communities. The processes and procedures make it difficult for new role-players to enter the market. If this continues we will forever be found guilty of perpetuating inequality by allowing the established and organised institutions to benefit at the expense of the new role-players who are found in the rural and marginalised communities. To illustrate this point, perhaps one should borrow from Jeffrey Sachs who, in his book entitled The End of Poverty, argues that "the key to ending extreme poverty is to get the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development".
We have an obligation not only to provide counselling and debriefing services to the victims of crime but also to build infrastructure in respect of victim empowerment centres. Although strides have been made in our province in providing counselling and debriefing services, a lot still needs to be done in terms of the establishment and building of victim empowerment centres. I am pleased to announce that this year we will be building two victim empowerment centres in the districts of Sekhukhune and Vhembe. However, there are still huge needs when it comes to addressing these challenges, and our women continue to suffer abuse and humiliation.
We are indeed challenged in Limpopo: We have only four shelters and a total of 82 victim empowerment centres in our province. In the Government Gazette of January the premier of the province delinked the department of health from social development. We are very grateful for this, because we are now focusing on the department of social development as a stand-alone and will be able to live up to the ideal of making sure that social development issues are taken care of. [Time expired.]