After having posted about the proposed re-registration of all social grant recipients in South Africa I have made a conscious decision to follow all the developments in the process with an eagle eye. As a result of this determination, I have come across another news report that quotes the same Minister on the same process. A number of inconsistencies are immediately clear in the statements made to the press, which reinforce my belief that the re-registration is not only ill-conceived, but also poorly planned and the repercussions either not considered, or considered unimportant.
In the older article which was the subject of my previous post, the Minister insists that the re-registration will be carried out in a door-to-door manner, with basically universal individual checks going on. In the new report, the Minister asserts that re-registration will be done at the pay points where the grants are collected by recipients each month. This is not only a contradiction, but also seems to fly in the fact of the supposed purpose of the re-registration. If the idea is to identify those people who should or should not be receiving grants, then simply making a note of those people who pitch up to collect the grants is pointless. Also, not all grant recipients collect their money at a pay point - many people have their grants paid into a bank or Post Office account. How will these people be re-registered?
I believe the Department needs to make a firm decision on what it is that they are hoping to accomplish. If the goal is to simply have an accurate database of grant recipients, then calling this process a re-registration is appropriate. If, however, the goal is to compile a database in addition to making calls as to who should be stripped of their grant and making new awards of grants, then the term re-registration is a misnomer. The Minister has alluded to both of these, but the language used and explanations given are somewhat confusing.
The idea of home visits for each grant recipient has now been scaled down to include only those people over the age of 75, and those who are confined to their beds. While the individual home visits notion was fraught with logistical problems, I do not believe that conducting home visits for a small group of persons is feasible either. What about recipients who travel long distances to and from collection points?
It appears to me that the Minister has been made aware of the problems created by her initial statement and is now trying valiantly to make it appear as if all the issues have been well though out. I believe her follow-up remarks have made it rather clear that the opposite is true.
At last year's Disabled Peoples International 8th World Assembly, the Minister for Women, Children and People with Disabilities made mention of the fact that coverage provided by social grants should not only be extended to provide more people with financial support, but also that the level of financial support should be increased from the current amount of R1140 per month for disability and old age grants. However, the President made a statement in November of last year emphasising that South Africa should not fall into the trap of becoming a 'welfare state' and that general revenue should be used to further development rather than 'feeding the poor'. How can it be that the President's viewpoint differ so drastically from that of his Minister?
As I mentioned previously, I am of the firm opinion that the re-registration (if that is an accurate description) is going to create huge logistical problems, and appears to be ill-conceived and poorly planned. one can only hope that the grant recipients, who are in dire need of financial support, are not the ones who suffer as a result of the governments' decision to shake things up under the guise of fraud and corruption prevention.
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