|
'Time to make grants to poor'
16/05/2002 17:53 - (SA)
Cape Town - The time has come for the government to stop making big gifts to the rich and to start making basic-income grants (BIG) to the poor, says the Basic Income Grant Coalition.
During a media conference held at parliament on Thursday, the
coalition endorsed the Taylor committee's call for a comprehensive social protection package that addressed poverty as well as special needs.
The report of the Taylor committee - the government-appointed
committee of inquiry into a comprehensive social security system
for South Africa - was released by Social Development Minister
Zola Skweyiya, two weeks ago.
Coalition spokesman Doug Tilton, of the South African Council of Churches, said the success of the country's transition to democracy would be judged ultimately by "our capacity to address apartheid's legacies of poverty, inequality, and underdevelopment".
The publication of the Taylor committee's report represented the "most revolutionary event in the life of our nation since the first democratic elections in 1994", he said.
"It marks the commencement of the second phase of the
humanisation of South African society.
Enormous gaps in the system
"Having completed much of the legislative reform necessary to
ensure that all South Africans have the right to be free, we must
now make certain that everyone has the means to be free."
Tilton said the coalition agreed with the committee that the
"patchwork of social grants inherited from the apartheid era is
inadequate to meet the challenge of stamping out extreme poverty", and that "means-testing is an ineffective way of targeting social grants".
There were enormous gaps in the grants system, and means-tested grants typically created "welfare traps" by penalising efforts to find employment.
A welfare system based on the notion of "tiding people over"
until they found employment was inappropriate and poorly suited to reducing poverty.
Because of the enormous disparities created in the past, South
Africa was in the unique situation of having both an acute need for a comprehensive social protection package and sufficient resources to finance it.
Thus, the committee recommended the introduction of a universal basic income grant of R100 a person a month.
Analysis indicated that such a grant had the potential, more
than any other possible social protection intervention, to reduce
poverty and promote human development and sustainable livelihoods.
'Time for grants to poor'
South Africa could afford a basic income grant, and
estimates indicated the net cost to the government would be about R20 to R24 billion a year, "before implementation of a solidarity tax",
Tilton said.
"In the past five years, the government has approved tax cuts
resulting in the loss to the fiscus of close to R50-billion a
year.
"It is time to stop making big gifts to the rich and to start
making BIG grants to the poor.
"The national debate on social security should no longer be
focused on whether we implement a basic income grant, but rather on how we do so," he said.
- SAPA
|
News
