Jetting the extra mile

Jet Club's effort to disseminate information to those who need it most coincides with end of the amnesty period for illegal recipients of social grants and is intended to support and promote the newly opened the SA Social Security Agency.

The agency opens this month and will work to speed up delivery of social grants, cut down on corruption, and lift the burden of administration from the country's nine provinces.

Cameron Burt, Jet Club manager, comments: "South Africa's social assistance programme is the government's most effective poverty relief mechanism, providing much needed support to the poor and needy.

"Research conducted in 2004 established that social grants in South Africa help to reduce poverty, contribute to social cohesion and have a positive impact on the economic opportunities of households. Moreover, it was found that the greatest poverty-reducing potential lies with the progressive extension of the child support grant to 14 years of age, which would yield a 57% poverty gap reduction. However, more often than not those who should be benefiting from financial support have limited access to information about social grants."

In response Jet Club has researched and designed an easy to use, 16-page special supplement investigating social grants in South Africa, and including fact sheets for Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana and Namibia. Amongst other things the information covers old age pensions and grants for child support, disability, care dependency and foster care, who qualifies and how to apply.

Although the need for easily accessible information was acknowledged at the outset of the project, just how dire that need was became increasingly evident in the course of the information gathering process. It is clear that the frequent changes in legislation and existing process complications will make this supplement an annual requirement.

"When the information appears in our Jet Club magazine, the readership of which is nearing the 2 million mark, those manning the social welfare phone lines are going to be swamped. We are finally getting the information out there to the people and I have no doubt they are going to make very good use of it," says Burt.