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As  a movement of unemployed young women living in informal settlements  and other disadvantaged communities in South Africa, called Young Women or Life,  we appeal to the Finance Minister, Honourable Enoch Godongwana, to make sure that the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) to be tabled on 11 November 2021 is about job creation and social protection for the benefit of young women in informal settlements and other disadvantaged communities. 

We expect to see the following in the MTBPS: 

• As part of its comprehensive social protection programme,  we expect the government to extend the Covid-19 Special Relief Dispensation Grant (R350) beyond March 2022.   We also ask the government to abandon its plans of wanting to replace Covid-19 Special Relief Dispensation Grant with a single grant per household.   This measure will exclude thousands of unemployed youth and young adults from the social protection that they desperately need during the current economic crisis. 
• As part of its job creation initiative, we ask the government and the treasury to make it compulsory for all the State Owned Enterprises, all government departments at the national and provincial level, and all municipalities to develop annual internship plans for the unemployed youth.  Each plan must have an annual quota that allocates 60% of internship opportunities to young women.  
• We ask the government to stop its practice of excessive austerity budget cuts to those departments that provide public services that are important for lifting up the lives of the poor (education, health, sanitation, water, police, human settlement).  Instead of reducing social spending on the poor, the government should cut the extravagant packages that it gives to the government officials who are underperforming as SOEs Executives, Cabinet Ministers, and Mayors.   

Issued by Young women for Life