SA getting poorer

2003-08-28 15:33

Johannesburg - Poverty in South Africa was steadily getting worse, says the Institute of Race Relations in the latest edition of its journal South Africa Survey.

The Survey quotes Global Insight, an organisation that compiles poverty index ratings, as saying that the poverty rate in South Africa rose from 41% in 1996 to 49% in 2001.

The Eastern Cape is the poorest province in the country with 67% of its population regarded as living in poverty, while neighbouring Western Cape has the lowest level at 21%, says the Survey.

In February 2002 a number of government departments agreed on an integrated approach to poverty alleviation.

Ten months later, in November 2002, the treasury asked the department of social development to explain allegations of corruption and fraud after the closure of hundreds of poverty relief projects in Gauteng and failure to spend millions of rands earmarked for poverty relief projects in 2002/03.

This followed an admission by the Gauteng government in August 2002 that 80% of its poverty alleviation projects had been closed down.

The survey also pointed to a report by the Human Rights Commission that the government had massively failed South Africa's most needy citizens.

Poverty alleviation reached only three million of 20 million people living below the poverty line, said the Commission.

- SAPA