No VAT on pads a big help
BY EASING the VAT burden on sanitary towels, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni has struck the right note. Humanity and human dignity outweigh monetary value.
He confirmed this in his maiden Mid-Term Budget Speech to resounding applause in Parliament, saying: “Zero-rating these products targets low-income households and restores the dignity of our young women.”
Millions of girls and women in abject and subjected to indignity each month, couldn’t agree more. One of them would have been a young woman living with disabilities, Refilwe Joyce Mokoto, 21, of Sharpeville in Sedibeng, south of Gauteng. She missed this good news because she gasped her last breath three days earlier.
Refilwe died in hospital. She attended the Gauteng Social Development (GDSD) Provincial Disability Eisteddfod and was part of a group of 13 GDSD services beneficiaries from the Vaal Metro Multi-Disability Academy in Sharpeville, who sang in a choir that day. She was mentally challenged and had epilepsy.
Refilwe had come full circle with services of the GDSD. She was given dignity and inspired to live for much, much more. She came to us as an orphan. She was placed in our foster care programme and when she turned 18 in 2015, we placed her in one of our protective workshops and further assisted her with a disability grant.
She was part of the more 45 000 vulnerable girl children who have either been orphaned, homeless or in home-based care programmes, receiving psychosocial support or children whose parents are unemployed due to chronic and deadly diseases such as HIV/Aids and cancer who benefit from our dignity packs programme.
Our dignity packs comprise toiletries, a lotion, toothpaste, deodorant and soap to last a month for boys for hygiene, plus sanitary towels for girls as well as a hat and sun screen for children with disability.
These packs are for children who come from poor households, who are sometimes maintained by elderly grandparents or are from child-headed households as well as those children who come from families experiencing extreme poverty and unemployment.
We also assist those who benefit from school-feeding programmes, children living with albinism, children in households with absent fathers as well as those whose parents are in receipt of a child support grant.
In the past four years, we have provided 1 200 000 dignity packs to these children.
And we welcome Minister Mboweni’s zero rating on pads, because it means we will be able to help more children. We have set aside an amount of R110 million for these dignity packs in this financial year, and we are confident that the finance minister’s announcement will stretch our resources a bit further.
Despite being the economic powerhouse of South Africa, and even with its share of the population living below the poverty line declining from 32% in 2004 to 16% in 2016, Gauteng remains confronted by challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality. Many of our children come from poor families, experience various difficulties such as dropping out of school, absenteeism due to hunger, lack of school uniforms and sanitary packs, teenage pregnancy, abuse etc.
These initiatives are part of the Gauteng government’s interventions and campaigns to help these children.