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Pretoria – The Children’s Institute and Center for Children’s Rights have called on Parliament to address the child malnutrition crisis in South Africa and increase child benefits by R 10 during the mid-term budget in October.
Child protection organizations recently presented the government’s budget impact on children and called for an urgent increase in childcare allowance.
This is necessary to combat child malnutrition and food insecurity. In their submissions to the Standing Committee on Budgets, Paula Proudlock and Zita Hansungule said that the 2021 budget provided for an increase of R10, resulting in a rise under inflation in food prices.
As a result, if nothing is done, children will get less food this year. They said the least that could be done is to add R10 to the child benefit allowance during the mid-term budget for October.
In their submissions, they said the constitution strongly protects children’s rights.
“We call on Parliament to protect the poorest and most vulnerable in our society from the erosion of the social grants that support them, especially in times of crisis.”
They added that Parliament could correct the regressive moves for children in the 2021/22 budget by ensuring that in the October medium-term budget, only a little more than 1 billion from October 1.
Given the pressing problem of child poverty and malnutrition and their long-term negative effects on the economy and the country as a whole, their bill asked parliament to review several decisions made by the National Treasury.
This includes the decision to limit the increase in the child benefit allowance to R10 without any further increase in financial year 2021/22, so that it falls short of food inflation.
They also call for a review of the decision to cut the budget for foster child benefit without budgeting the parallel introduction of a supplementary child benefit for orphans living with relatives as planned in view of the necessary overall legal solution to the care crisis.
According to the two organizations, these decisions are punitive for children and their caregivers and regressive.
They urged Parliament to address this urgently and urged the Treasury to allocate an additional R1 billion for the second half of the 2021/22 budget year.
South Africa has an enormous burden of child malnutrition, which not only affects the well-being of children
and their right to survival and development, but continues the intergenerational cycle of poverty and inequality.
“The rise in the sub-food allowance subsidy is likely to increase child malnutrition.
“Instead, the budget could provide for a second increase in child benefit of R10 in October, as has been the practice for the past eight years, dividing the increase into two tranches of R10 – one in April and the second in October.”
It is also important that the budget is made available for an increase in the childcare allowance for orphans living with relatives.
They said it was particularly untenable in these troubled times that the poorest and most vulnerable children should have to pay the bill for the reallocation of the budget with grant victims.
Pretoria News
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