BY KEDIBONE MOLAETSI

SOCIAL development MEC, Fenny Gaolaolwe said the North West government was working hard to make sure lives of disabled persons improve. Gaolaolwe said this in line with November declared an official disability month.

She said that all efforts were being made to give dignity to all disabled people.
“We met with Minister Bathabile Dlamini last week to discuss way forward. We also met with disability persons’ forum. They highlighted their concerns, so as government we will make sure we listen to. We will be launching a computer laboratory for disabled persons in Itsoseng village, North West on November 25.

“We also went to old persons’ parliament in Kimberley the whole last week. The elders also raised their concerns, and their grievances were noted. Some said they were concerned about unauthorised deductions they always experienced from their grants. That issue is still a challenge. However, we requested that to come forward. There are some cases that we dealt with, and we managed to help most of them,” she said.

Gaolaolwe also warned elderly people not to sign any documents that they do not understand and desist from giving their Sassa cards to loan sharks.

“Some of the parents go on and take credit from either local shops or individuals. They end up leaving their Sassa cards as assurance. No one must leave her/his cards or share the pin number with anyone. We will harshly deal with those who found to be wrong-doing. People must come forward and let us know what’s going on. You are the eye and ears for government, so bring any information that can be helpful. We want to root out corruption within the system.

“We have fired three people from my department so far, and laid criminal charges against them. So our message is crystal clear, we will not tolerate any corruption. If we find any undeserving person earning government grant, we will deal with that person harshly. No one is allowed to loot government coffers,” Gaolaolwe said.
She also mentioned that North West has 383 wards and each ward has a responsible social worker. However, there were issues like transport that impede on the movement of social workers to communities.

“We are dealing with that challenge. We can confirm that most social workers have encountered transportation problem. That alone was a setback because they cannot do their work efficiently. We are now in discussing to see how we could help in that problem. Most of our social workers qualify for transport allowance. We will see how to deal with it. We’re also working together with department of education and sport development.

“The department will make sure that those children who are from disadvantaged background receive attention. Some of the kids end up not concentrated in class, only to find out that the challenges are from home. So we have assigned each social worker per school. It is so bad sometimes you find an older person left with more than six children to take care of. Our plea to the youth is that, this is a societal issue so we need their help,” she said.
Plans are also underway to have bursaries for social worker training.
“We have social workers bursaries. We need more social workers to curb challenges we facing as a nation. We are aware that we did not hire as many graduates as we can. So far we have absorbed 60 graduates. Another issue was older persons old age home based cares. The government cannot support all old age persons home based cares across the province. Most of them do not meet the requirements. We will regulate them because we’ve realised that some people use them as a way of absorbing money from the department,” Gaolaolwe said.

-TDN

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