South Africa : War on poverty campaign brings relief to Kagiso residents

By Luyanda Makapela

Johannesburg - The recently launched War on Poverty campaign in Kagiso has brought much needed relief to local residents.

Officials from the Gauteng Provincial Government and the Office of the Presidency visited the Kagiso Location in the West Rand at the weekend to launch the campaign which aims to bring basic social services to people while assessing the needs of individual households.

Kagiso senior citizen, Paulima Mpeme, 103, was overjoyed when she received a wheelchair from the department as part of the campaign.

Gogo Mpeme, who shares an RDP house with her grandchildren and great grandchildren, was among the 29 households that also received relief food packages.

Granny Mpeme was also among the community members whose households were visited by Gauteng Social Development MEC Kgaogelo Lekgoro, among others, in a bid to assess the basic conditions of people in poor communities.

During the door-to-door campaign, MEC Lekgoro and senior government officials visited 31 houses in Kagiso to identify problems experienced by households.

Later the campaign was used as a mobile service centre were Departments of Home Affairs and Social Development officials helped resident with application of ID's and social security grants respectively.

MEC Lekgoro said it has been government's priority to assist poor households.

"As we understand that that there is poverty in our communities because we have seen it by ourselves, we want to ensure that our efforts are aimed at helping people in households to fight this poverty," he said

The MEC also acknowledged that some of people in the area did not qualify for grants nor pay for government services.

He added that his department had further noted that children were not accessing early childhood education because they could not afford.

"Our intention then is to identify these problems and come up with a comprehensive response. We will sit with the households until we are satisfied that everybody in such households it taken care of," said MEC Lekgoro.

Mogale City Local Municipality Mayor, Calvin Seerane said they appreciated the provincial government's efforts in fast tracking service delivery to the people.

"For us as local municipality we have limited resources but we have bigger needs from our communities.

"We are going to work with the community to ensure that the problems that are identified are resolved and reports are provided to communities by the ward councillor," said Councillor Seerane. - BuaNews