Question NW1318 to the Minister of Social Development
19 August 2020 - NW1318
Abrahams, Ms ALA to ask the Minister of Social Development
(1)In view of her department’s Covid-19 lockdown directives which continue to keep early childhood development (ECD) centres closed under alert level 3 risk-adjusted lockdown, resulting in many ECD centres being under severe financial strain and/or facing permanent closure, what financial and/or other relief packages will her department provide to registered ECD centres to assist them to re-open once they are allowed to; (2) whether her department will procure and/or financially subsidise personal protective equipment for the learners and staff at the ECD centres?
Reply:
(1) The Department of Social Development is not in the financial position to provide any additional financial support to registered ECD centres that remain closed under the state of national disaster as there is no budget specifically allocated for this purpose. However,on 9 May 2020, the Minister of Social Development issued Directions that “The Department must continue to subsidize the early childhood development centres during the state of national disaster” (See Government Notice 517 published in Government Gazette No 43300 of 9 May 2020). This Direction immediately waived the requirement that early childhood development programmes that already receive subsidy need to submit a new application for funding for the 2020/2021 financial while the national state of disaster is in place. The collective amount being paid annually towards this funding is R3.1 billion, targeting early childhood development programmes in poor communities in particular. This funding continues to be paid out to early childhood development centres through the nine provincial departments of social development, which is a provincial competency as contemplated in section 93(1) of the Children’s Act 38 of 2005. This is a significant step that is intended to buffer the impact of the measures implemented during the national state of disaster risk-adjusted lockdown.
(2) The Department is currently in discussion with the National Treasury to repurpose the current ECD infrastructure conditional grant towards supporting early childhood development programmes with personal protective equipment for personnel and staff. If successful, priority will be given to those unfunded registered ECD programmes serving poor communities as required in terms of section 93(4)(a) of the Children’s Act 38 of 2005; and unregistered ECD programmes serving poor communities will also be considered. It should be noted that provision of ECD programmes is private and NPOdriven, government only regulates and subsidise these programmes.