Pretoria - Pilot projects to encourage self reliance among social grant supporters have been set up in some provinces, said President Jacob Zuma.
President Zuma was responding to questions following last week's State of the Nation Address (SONA) in Parliament on Thursday. The President was referring to the fact that close to 15 million South Africans receive social grants, 10 million of which are children.
"By September 2010 in the Northern Cape, 16 976 people had been linked to income generating opportunities, 3 024 in Gauteng as well as 450 women and 182 young people in the Eastern Cape," Zuma said.
In the North West province in Bokfontein, 600 social grant beneficiaries have been linked to the local community works scheme programme, while in Dutyini village in the Eastern Cape, 39 women and one man, who are grant beneficiaries, are linked to a number of projects such as candle making.
"Lessons from these pilot projects will enable better roll out of these programmes around the country. Another key poverty alleviation mechanism directed at children, is the subsidy ranging between R12 and R15 per child per day, for qualifying children from poor households attending Early Childhood Development centres," explained Zuma.
Zuma acknowledged that social grants were useful in the alleviation of poverty, but were by no means a substitute for rural development and employment creation.
"To date, more than 400 000 children receive the subsidy in 16 250 centres registered with the Department of Social Development," he explained
The plan for 2011 is to increase the subsidised centres to 17 000.
