Covid-19: Gauteng MECs give updates during second virtual house sitting

The Gauteng Provincial Government hosted its second Virtual House Sitting on 2 June.

The Virtual House Sitting offered MECs an opportunity to respond to questions posed by Members of the Provincial Legislature as part of their oversight mandate and holding the executive accountable.

Some members raised questions about the requests for food parcels and their delivery.

Acting MEC for Social Development, Panyaza Lesufi, said that the department is in the process of consolidating lists from local authorities, NGOs and social partners, however, this has not been finalised yet. He said that as of 1 June, 194 000 parcels had been delivered and 322 000 families have been reached. “It would be really unfortunate if people think that we would skip other people purely because their list came from local government or their councillors. People that are giving us these names, we don’t ask for political affiliation or if the ward councillor comes from any other political party.”

He highlighted that the lists submitted don’t automatically mean that people will receive food parcels as there are criteria for people who qualify for food parcels. “We can’t give people that are employed or people that are salaried or receiving other forms of social grants food parcels.”

He said that there are five categories of beneficiaries. These include:

1. Bedridden people and those that receive medication
2. Child-headed households which usually benefit from feeding schemes at school
3. Homeless people
4. Victims of gender-based violence
5. People who have been unemployed as a result of Covid-19 such those doing gardening and odd jobs.

He said that they provide 1 200 food parcels but receive an average of 17 000 calls. “This is the reason why we went back to the executive to say we really believe we need to ramp up and the executive agreed that we need to ramp this up and they gave us the go-ahead to increase our distribution from 1 200 per month per region to 4 000 food parcels per day per region.”

He added that people that will be receiving the R350 Covid-19 Social Relief Grant will be eliminated from the lists. He added that R2.7 billion in grants has been paid out.

Lesufi said that about 328 000 young people applied to be a part of the Youth Brigade. He said that thus far, 728 young people have been deployed at Quintile 1 to Quintile 3 schools. The youngsters are trained by the Department of Health and so far 2 700 have been trained.

For the education department, Lesufi said that they have been advised that there were 93 schools where delivery of PPE was disrupted by criminal elements. He added that they are working with schools to ensure they have the necessary support.

Jack Bloom, who is on the Health Portfolio Committee asked MEC for Health Bandile Masuku how the pandemic has affected vaccinations for children and how many children have been vaccinated compared to last year.

Masuku said the pandemic has not had an adverse impact on the number of vaccinations within the province. He said that in 2018/19 about 84 per cent of children under one were vaccinated. In 2019/20 the percentage of fully immunised children under one is about 88 per cent.

He said that they will be having an expo with small businesses who have stock of personal protective equipment on hand so that they can also support small businesses.

He added that they are confident that the numerous systems they have put in place to prevent the spread of the disease. He said that they expect to see the peak around August/September, but it will depend on what is done to enforce regulations around social distancing, hygiene and restrictions around big gatherings.

There are five quarantine sites currently available in the province as well as in various health care facilities. He added that there are 15 000 staff members working on contact tracing.

MEC for Public Transport and Road Infrastructure Jacob Mamabolo said that R10.8 million has been spent on the Public Transport Covid-19 prevention programme. He added that numerous private companies have also provided assistance. He said that historically taxi ranks have been neglected but now 51 taxi ranks have been cleaned. He added that they are confident they will reach more.

MEC for Community Safety, Faith Mazibuko said that there have been 3 249 cases of domestic violence reported and in the same period last year there were over 4 000 cases reported. She said that 2 339 of the cases opened have resulted in arrests. She highlighted that they ensure that during the lockdown, victims of violence were able to travel to receive help.

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