Why are 1,000 children dying in South African hospitals each year owing to acute malnutrition?
Any child is entitled to a child support grant of about R600.
Why are 2.2-million children entitled to child support grants not getting them?
We have put the South African Social Security Agency [Sassa] on terms several times to advertise that these grants are available. They go out to communities in the deepest rural areas with [the departments of] home affairs and health to ensure children from these areas can access these services.
So why are more than 40% of children in households living below the poverty line not receiving child support grants?
The government goes out of its way to tell people to apply for these grants, and Sassa is penalised if it doesn’t reach the targets. When we prepare the budgets, we identify that these are the estimated number of child grants that should be issued.
Why aren’t there people from Sassa in health facilities to ensure children are registered at birth so that they can receive grants?
When it comes to the clinics, the departments of health and home affairs make sure every child born is captured so that their names are on the national population register.
Then why are 40% of eligible children not receiving child support grants?
The briefings my department has received say the percentage is considerably lower than 40%. Certainly in the seventh parliament that figure is ridiculously high.
Why in spite of pleas to the department to close the gap between the child support grant and the amount needed to bring these children above the food poverty line, hasn’t this been done?
The figure you are talking about is close to R900. The commitment the government has made is to reach that figure by 2030. At the moment, we’re on R600. About 27% of South African children are stunted. You cannot have a situation like this, so we have a lot of work to do. When NGOs and NPOs identify malnutrition, they should alert Sassa and my department.
Are you giving them enough support?
Who?
The NPOs and 60,000 community health workers you rely on for early identification of malnutrition.
That is the mandate of the department of health.
Shouldn’t your departments be working more closely with one another?
We meet every month in a cabinet cluster to address these issues. So I would query your figure of 1,000 children dying of acute malnutrition every year.
NPOs active in the field say this number is just the tip of the iceberg.
They can say what they want, but we have estimated the number of children who qualify for these grants, and we monitor very closely whether we are reaching them. But the figure of 40% is ridiculous.
The claim that 40% of children in households living below the poverty line are not receiving child support grants is ridiculous?
That figure’s too high, yes. And those who say 1000 dying of malnutrition every year in hospitals is the tip of the iceberg ...
They say more than 50% of child deaths occur outside health-care facilities, most of them as a result of acute malnutrition.
Those are not the briefings we get, and we work very closely with the department of health.
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