Calls increase for a raise in child support grants

Calls are gaining momentum that child support grants should be increased to ease the socio-economic burden of the national lockdown on the poorest of the poor.

Academics and civil society leaders – including the United Nations Children’s Fund’s South African representative and the president of the South African Medical Research Council – penned an open letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa to motivate “an urgent increase to the value of the child support grant by R500 for a period of six months”.

Now the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (Casac) has voiced its support for the cause.

In a statement, it urged the government to “implement without delay a temporary increase in the child support grant and initiate a special grant for pregnant women”.

Casac’s executive director Lawson Naidoo said: “Government must lead from the front and that means protecting the most vulnerable.”

The child support grant is currently R440 a month.

In their open letter to the president, the academics and civil society leaders said: “Before the lockdown, over 10 million children were receiving nutritious meals through the [National] School Nutrition Programme and early childhood development programmes.”

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga last month said there was “no way” the school feeding schemes could continue over this period. Equal Education has since appealed to the department to “urgently reconsider its approach”.

The former director of Childline, Joan van Niekerk, who is now an independent child rights and protection consultant, yesterday warned that childhood hunger came with long-term consequences.

“Lack of food causes stunting in growth and problems in terms of learning,” she said.

The child support grant was “the biggest grant in terms of numbers, reaching 12.8 million children – nearly two thirds of all children in South Africa”.

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za

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