Parliament - Eradicating poverty is government’s highest priority towards building a better life for all, and as such President Thabo Mbeki has announced a “War Room” to be established to fight poverty.

“As such, in the spirit of Business Unusual, government intends this year to intensify the campaign to identify specific households and individuals in dire need and to put in place interventions that will help, in the intervening period, to alleviate their plight,” President Mbeki said delivering his State of the Nation Address on Friday.

“For this, we will require a National War Room for a War Against Poverty bringing together departments such as Social Development, Provincial and Local Government, Trade and Industry, Agriculture and Land Affairs, Public Works and Health as well as provincial and local administrations, which will work with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and business to identify the interventions required in specific households and implement them as a matter of urgency.”

Specific priorities critical to the country's war against poverty, in pursuit of socio-economic inclusion, would also be attended to this year.

These include speeding up land and agrarian reform with detailed plans for land acquisition, better implementation of agricultural support services and household food support, and improving the capital base and reach of MAFISA to provide micro-credit in this sector.

MAFISA is the Micro Agricultural Financial Institutional Scheme of South Africa, which assists beneficiaries to run existing agricultural businesses, start new agricultural businesses and develop them into fully fledged commercial operations.

“Focus will be placed on areas of large concentrations of farm dwellers and those with high eviction rates, and we aim to increase black entrepreneurship in agricultural production by five percent per year, and the audit on land ownership will be speeded up.”

President Mbeki said Finance Minister Trevor Manuel's budget on 20 February 2008 would provide for an increase in the social grant system.

This he said would be done by equalising the age of eligibility at 60, thus benefiting about half a million men.

The social assistance programme is helping to reduce poverty, contributing to social cohesion and having a positive impact on the economic opportunities of households.

This is according to research conducted by the Economic Policy Research Institute on behalf of the Department of Social Development in 2004.

The study found that the provision of grants contributed to an increase in the number of children enrolling in schools, while living in a household that receives grants is correlated with a higher success rate in finding employment.

The provision of social grants is the government's biggest poverty relief programme, paying out in the region of R50-billion per annum to over nine million South Africans.

Scaling up the National Youth Service programme including a graduated increase of the intake in the Military Skills Development programme of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) from the current 4 000 to 10 000, would also be intensified.

The President said R700 million had already been given to the SANDF to start scaling up the programme.

The Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) would also increase the intake of young people in the programme to maintain public infrastructure.

“This would double the number of children enrolled in Early Childhood Development to over 600 000 through 1 000 new sites with more than 3 500 practitioners trained and employed, and increasing the number of care-givers.

“About R1 billion over baseline will be allocated to programmes that fall within the EPWP,” President Mbeki reassured.

The EPWP is one of several government strategies aimed at addressing unemployment in South Africa. - BuaNews