Deputy Chairperson, hon Minister, MECs present and hon members, firstly, I would like to thank the department for their budget presentation and the parliamentary research unit for their input.
As has already been stated, this is a brand-new department and replaces the previous, somewhat dysfunctional Office on the Status of Women, Office on the Rights of the Child and Office on the Status of Disabled Persons.
These departments were all previously situated in the Presidency, in the hope of giving strategic direction and leadership to the various programmes focusing on women, children and persons with disabilities.
The new department, considering its scope, objectives and targeted groups, has received the smallest allocation of all the Ministries. The department has a total budget allocation for 2010 and 2011 of only R97,8 million, with Programme 2 - Women's Empowerment, Programme 3 - Children's Rights and Responsibilities, and Programme 4 - Rights of People with Disabilities, receiving only some R7,1 million each.
Deputy Chairperson, who can forget the disabled children that we visited at the Le Rena Re A Gona project on our visit to Limpopo province? Who can forget the children, lying on a blanket on a concrete floor, who are visited perhaps only once a month by an occupational therapist?
Children with disabilities who live in abject poverty are particularly vulnerable to hunger and environmental barriers, such as housing, and the budget must speak to the needs of children with mobility impairments and those who make use of wheelchairs.
One of the largest portions of the budget, however, is in respect of gender equality, and is taken up by the transfer payments from the Commission for Gender Equality - a Chapter 9 institution - of some R49,1 million. Whilst I believe an attempt is being made to clean up the mess at the Gender commission, a report on the gender body in a newspaper stated -
... there is no culture of gender work in [this] organisation. In fact there is no organisation at all.
The report further states that the perception of the commission was poor. It had mismatched human resource capacity, poor programme design, fragmented leadership at the commissioner level and poor, noncompliant financial systems, resulting in a disclaimer in the audit report.
Some of the reports of the programmes previously located in the Presidency and the audited financial statements have, as yet, not been provided to the committee. As such, it is difficult to ascertain whether any debts have been inherited by the new department from the former offices.
Programme 1 - Administration constitutes 25% of the total budget appropriation. Considering that this is a new department - and initial costs such as operations and support systems, recruitment of staff, capital expenditure, and the setting up of IT infrastructure are included - this expenditure may be justifiable in this financial year. But the department cannot appropriate anywhere near this amount for 2011-12 or 2012-13, as the administrative costs would then continue to consume the most significant portion of the department's resources.
It is of concern that so few resources have been allocated to mainstreaming and integrating the rights of women, children and persons with disabilities, thus marginalising these already vulnerable groups. Thus, despite the needs and rights of these groups having been elevated to ministerial level, the financial human resource allocations indicate that they are still relegated to the bottom of the barrel.
The department will not be able to effectively implement this mandate due to its financial constraints, but has chosen rather to fund catalyst projects which are already being implemented by other departments. The department intends working across all departments as well as all spheres of government. The bulk of the resources, therefore, continues to be within the other departments, NGOs and the private sector.
The aim of the newly established Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities is to drive, accelerate and oversee government's equity, equality and empowerment agendas.
In my home province, the Free State, the situation is so bad that the provincial government and in particular the department of social development, has been taken to court twice in one year because the department has not paid sufficient subsidies to institutions that are responsible for the poorest of the poor in the child and youth centres, let alone to children with disabilities. It is imperative that the funds that are transferred to the National Youth Development Agency be monitored on an ongoing basis. The agency - which takes up a large portion of the programme budget - must be held to account on the use of funds transferred to it and the lessons learnt by its predecessors, namely the National Youth Commission and the Umsobomvu Youth Fund, which were previously located in the Department of Labour.
The mainstreaming of youth development cannot be undertaken without the appropriate ...