Soaring costs eat into grant for children
Soaring food prices and mounting socio-economic challenges are wiping out many of the grant system’s gains, according to the SAMRC.
|||Johannesburg -
When the child support grant was introduced 18 years ago, the main aim was to curb poverty and ensure children achieved their developmental milestones by receiving appropriate nutrition.
Fast forward to 2016 and soaring food prices and mounting socio-economic challenges are wiping out many of the grant system’s gains.
A study by the Health Systems Research Unit of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) has found the size of the grants is not aligned with the high levels of food insecurity and rising food prices, and the health of children is being affected.
Last year, the child support grant was increased by only R10. This year it went up R30 to R350 a month.
The support grant is the smallest of the social grants.
“The child support grant is a major poverty alleviation strategy, yet this research has shown that it (the amount of money) is inadequate to meet the basic needs of children in contexts of extreme poverty, rising food prices and food insecurity,” says SAMRC principal investigator Dr Wanga Zembe.
The research paper focused on the experience of cash transfers in alleviating childhood poverty.
Mothers and children participating in the study were part of a larger cluster randomised intervention trial that took place between 2005 and 2008 in peri-urban Paarl in the Western Cape, and Umlazi in Durban and rural Rietvlei in KwaZulu-Natal.
The children ranged in age from nine months to 3 years.
It was after this trial ended that former participants were traced and invited to take part in a study to measure the grant’s outcomes for nutrition.
The study also measured how many people took up the grant and how long they received for.
The researchers enrolled 746 participants for the study.
“Despite the presence of the child support grant, high rates of stunting continue unabated among poor children,” Zembe says.
A single loaf feeds 13 and there's no cash for school
In Durban Deep, west of Joburg, 13 members of the Ncube and Mjungu families have just had breakfast - a single loaf of white bread is cut into 22 pieces.
Nomelikhaya Mjungu lives with her daughter Nandipha, her husband and their two children. Mjungu also shares the house with her brother and his wife, Lufhuno Makumbe, and their three children.
Only four children in the house receive grant money. The adults in the house don't work. Combined, the money they have each month to run the household comes to just R1 400.
“This money is too little for us to look after these children. We can't send them to school, we can't buy them clothes and other essentials. It's meant for them but we also survive on it,” she says.
At night, Mjungu says the family often eat pap and spinach picked up from a veld nearby.
“We don't have electricity so one needs to buy paraffin to warm up the water, cook and bath. This is an extra expense. There's not even money to buy toilet paper, so we use scraps of newspapers,” she says.
Josphat Ncube, a father of two, sits in a corner and contemplates what will happen to his children now that their mother is gone. His wife died recently.
The children receive grant money and he does his best to hold down the odd garden job. But they're left with very little hope the children will grow up healthy and be taken care of.
Handouts, food parcels keep hungry household going
From the outside, house 206/11097 in Pimville extension nine seems as ordinary as any. But those living in the three-bedroomed RDP house are grappling with the painful reality of poverty.
It's home to a family of 17, and the household is run by Lucy Mania.
The grandmother, who is in her 70s, sits on her chair in the kitchen.
Her two grandsons lie beside each other on a tiny rug on the floor, with their heads on a pillow.
One of the boys dips his fingers into a tub of porridge next to him.
The porridge has caked and dried up and he shows no interest in it.
The other boy is too weak to brush away the flies that hover around him.
“He is sick. He has a cold,” says his mother, Keneilwe Makati.
The 31-year-old dropped out of school in Grade 4 and is unemployed.
She has 11 children. The eldest is 18 and the youngest eight months. Makati receives the child support grant for only two of her children.
She shares the home with her grandmother and sisters.
One of her sisters has two children, but neither child receives a grant.
For many years the family has relied on handouts from the community.
A food parcel they receive every month from the African Children’s Feeding Scheme contains 10kg of maize meal, 1kg Jungle Oats, 1kg Morvite instant porridge, a packet of sugar beans, a tin of fish and baked beans. This lasts barely two days.
Most of Makati’s children visit a community centre every day after school where they receive two slices of bread and milk. That's their meal for the day.
The family are working to sort out birth certificates for the children so they can apply for grants.
Saturday Star