Hon Deputy Speaker, I suppose this question was expecting the previous answer to be that we don't have social workers, but we didn't say that. We said their numbers are on par. However, we recognise that we still need to do more. We need to get more social workers, given that we are a developing country. We also indicated that there is a plethora of legislation that we need to implement, including these new conditions which are not necessarily imposed by any legislation.
So in all that work we recognise that there really is a need for more social workers. By the way, there is something I haven't mentioned: We also have practitioners out in the field who are doing the lighter jobs which do not require a high level of professional skill. So, those people are assisting us at present, but we are doing our best to get more social workers to implement the entire spectrum of the work that we need to do. This ranges from the implementation of the Children's Act, support work to strengthen the family as the basic unit in our society and working with the elderly to even the new programmes that are being employed in the area of health and the entire spectrum of work that Minister Motsoaledi will be doing.
But, as Minister Motsoaledi will say, we will also be calling upon retired social workers to help in case there is the need to do that. That call has been made but for now we don't really have a shortage. We are just recognising that the work we do is enormous and we need to get more and more hands. We are training at the same time, as I said earlier on. Thank you very much. [Applause.]