Social worker calls for review of destitute policy

Lesedi Mkhutshwa | Friday September 1, 2017 14:23

Speaking during a consultative meeting by the portfolio committee on local government and social welfare, which was held recently at Cresta Marang hotel Ogoditsemang Seleme said the policy is long overdue. He said a new policy was needed to address the conflicting issues of destitution.

The new policy, he said, would have to recognise that the standard of living is now complex due to regional economic influence in the price of commodities, the disintegration of family unit leading to individualism, and the high poverty rate.

Seleme explained that the current destitute person socio economic threshold is below P300 but most of the beneficiaries in town reside in rented shelter, which are far above the recommended threshold.

He added that most of the clientele who could be benefiting from the poverty eradication have challenges of operational space. Seleme said that Francistown has 626 destitutes in which 93 are temporary, 533 permanent.

The department however is experiencing budgets constraints due to the growing number of clients.

“Continued provision of social safety nets under recurrent budget will not provide adequate finance to address the growing clientele needs. Our view is that the same arrangement accorded to other programmes of orphan care and home based care be extended to relief of destitute program,” he said.

Seleme said that the current budget maintains over 1,654 clients with the budget of P4, 990,840.00 but for the financial year 2016/17 they had an over expenditure exceeding P2 million. Member of Parliament (MP) for Okavango Bagalatia Arone echoed the same sentiments.

He said that there is a need for most of the policies under governance and social welfare to be amended in order to cater for the current situations faced by citizens.“Times have changed and we need to review our Acts to match our current conditions for the betterment of people’s lives,” he said