South Africans waiting in line to register for social grants. EPA
Social grants will increase in relation to inflation rates. The aim of such grants is to reduce poverty and economic inequality to empower women, youth and those with disabilities.
Grants will increase as follows:
Currently at least 19 million children are already beneficiaries of child grants.
The total number of grant beneficiaries is expected to increase by 1 million in the medium term to 19 million people by 2022/23.
R714 million from the Department of Social Development will be reprioritised to its provincial departments for programmes on prevention of HIV and AIDS infections, substance abuse, gender-based violence and femicide.
Additional funds are reprioritised from the social worker scholarship programme, which ends in 2020/21, to provinces for the employment of 200 social worker graduates.
R406.2 million in 2020/21 will be reprioritised for early childhood development conditional grant. This will increase to R517.3 million in 2021/22 and R626 million in 2022/23.
To combat gender-based violence and femicide, R15 million is allocated to establish a national council to tackle the scourge. This budget will drastically increase to R853 million in 2022/23 to strengthen interventions for women’s economic empowerment, to promote the rights of people with disabilities and support youth development.
R651.9 million will be allocated to provinces to provide sanitary products to more than half of all female learners between Grade 7 and matric in the country’s poorest schools.
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