The Ministry for Women, Youth, Children and People with Disabilities has missed the deadline to submit its Annual Report to Parliament for the second year in a row. The Department has only been in existence for two years, which means that it has never submitted an Annual Report on time.

This is symptomatic of a Department in distress.

Despite a chequered ministerial career, we had hoped that Lulu Xingwana would turn the Department around after the destruction wreaked by her predecessor. But the indications are that nothing much has changed.

This Department was established to send out a signal that government cares about the vulnerable and marginalized. Unfortunately, it has achieved the opposite.

The Department's R120 million budget would have been far better spent on initiatives that will actually change the lives of vulnerable women, children and people with disabilities. If the Democratic Alliance (DA) was in national government, the funding would have been spent on, amongst other things:

• Increased funding for social workers, psychologists and counsellors, both at police stations and magistrate's courts;
• Regularly monitoring police stations' compliance with the Domestic Violence Act;
• Establishing more safe houses and subsidised shelters for victims of abuse;
• Ensuring that rape prophylactic kits are available at all police stations;

Providing extra funding to schools for the disabled to ensure these children receive quality education irrespective of their background.

The need to support vulnerable women, children and people with disabilities in South Africa is very real. It is time this government started taking their rights seriously.

Statement issued by Denise Robinson MP, DA Shadow Minister of Women, Youth, Children and People with Disabilities, October 4 2011

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