Mogale City residents welcome Children’s Amendment Bill

28 November 2021

The majority of the residents of Mogale City Local Municipality in Gauteng who attended the public hearings on the Children’s Amendment Bill have welcomed the draft legislation.

They told the Portfolio Committee on Social Development which conducts public hearings on the Bill in the Gauteng Province, that they hoped the Bill would expedite the registration of foster care and applications of the identity documents(IDs) for orphans, among other things.

The committee heard that foster care registration process was currently lengthy and frustrating, and sometimes leads foster care parents choosing to abandon their applications. The orphanage home owners also reported about the difficulty in acquiring IDs for orphans, with a lengthy process involving social workers and the departments of justice and home affairs.

Foster care grants also stop when the children turn eighteen years and the process of applying for an extension often leaves the orphans frustrated and resulting to them trying alternative ways to survive.

Gauteng is the seventh province to be consulted on the Children’s Amendment Bill, and the committee still has to hold public hearings in the Free State and Western Cape provinces before finalising its report and to table it in the National Assembly.

Issued by Sakhile Mokoena, Media Officer, Parliament, 28 November 2021