Report on an Audit of Government's Poverty Reduction Programmes ...

Table 1: Categories based on types of activitiesPROGRAMME TYPESocial securityFree/subsidised basic householdservicesSubsidised individual servicesHousingLand reformIncome generating projects andSMMEsPublic worksPROGRAMMES• Child support grant• Old age pension• Disability grant• Food parcels• Water and sanitation• Electricity• Transport• Refuse removal• Education and training• Healthcare• RDP housing• Land redistribution• Land restitution• Land tenure reform• Programmes by DTI (e g Technology for Women in Business,Small Medium Enterprise Development Programme, Skills Supportprogramme, Micro Credit Outlets (Khulastart), Tourism DevelopmentFinance)• Various departmental programmes (DSD, DEAT, etc.)• CBPWP• Working for Water• LandCare• CoastCare• other ‘components’ of the EPWP, etc.The advantage of this rather simple approach – apart from the fact that it is simple – is that it does not rely ona preconception of what a programme does or seeks to do, and it is aligned with government activities as theyare presently defi ned.Although in principle both approaches are serviceable ways of categorizing poverty reduction initiatives, in thesense that both could fi gure as fi elds in the database of initiatives, and thus serve as a means of disaggregating ordrawing a stratifi ed sample, it is felt that the second, simpler approach by activity type is preferred.The reader may wish to know why, having delved into the semantics of “poverty alleviation” etc. that some sortof typology based on these terms is not proposed. It is felt that these terms are over-used and at the same timeinterpreted too variously to be useful, especially if and when the PSC may wish to communicate with the outsideworld in respect of its poverty-related work.18