BY REGINALD KANYANE

MOTHERS who leave their children in the care of grandparents or other guardians should not be allowed to hold social grant cards for such children.

This came from Deputy Minister of Social Development, Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu when she addressed residents in Disaneng near Mahikeng.

Bogopane-Zule said that deserving children continue to be deprived the benefits of social grants that in turn are abused by absent mothers.

“We will make sure that we take away social grants from those irresponsible parents. Many children do not stay with their parents however the social grants are with them. There is this tendency where mothers leave their children with grandparents or guardians but keep the social grants cards.

“From now on, we will make sure that the social grants are received by those who stay with the recipients. Social development department pays over R12.5million social grants through our SASSA agency,” she said.

Bogopane-Zulu also highlighted that her department will address the challenges faced by community in Ratlou local municipality.

“We will form cooperatives in order to eradicate poverty, inequality and unemployment. We have also held talks with Ratlou local municipal mayor, Tebogo Modise in ways of assisting you.

“Our footprint outreach programme visits all villages across the country in order to improve the lives of the masses. We are also working in partnership with labour and mineral affairs departments,” she said.

Ratlou local municipality mayor, Tebogo Modise said the initiative by social development department will benefits many residents.

She said they managed to profile some of the residents and looked into the best way to assist them.

“We welcome the Mikondzo campaign as the municipality. We had household profiling and looked into opportunities available for our people. We have also dialogued with our residents along with social development department. We have now identified some people and the challenges their faced with in daily basis.

“We have launched a brick-making project because we have inroads to be paved. We have received computer lab and 200 bicycles were donated to underprivileged pupils,” she said.

Kgosi Selabe Mogakoludi Masibi of Disaneng village said he welcome the initiative by social development. He said many people are living in abject poverty and the improvements will be imperative.

“We highly-appreciate social development’s quest to improve our people’s lives. More job opportunities are needed especially amongst the youth. I believe that will continue to eliminate crime. The use of drugs and alcohol abuse is also rife in the area. We needed this intervention,” Masibi said.

A call was made for children in the area to be allowed to go to school so that they could have a brighter future.

At present, most of the young people’s lives are ruined as they are turned into cheap labour in nearby farms.

-TDN

Follow us on Twitter@Taung_DailyNews or @IceT_

taungdailynews@gmail.com