Govt targets K500m social cash transfer at disabled

Fri, 23 Jun 2017 11:17:20 +0000

By SANDRA MACHIMA

ZAMBIA has scaled social programmes that are meant to alleviate the suffering of persons with disabilities who are often discriminated and marginalized, Minister of Community Development and Social Services Emerine Kabanshi has said.

Ms Kabanshi informed the United Nations that persons with disabilities were the key target to the country’s social cash transfer programme which had been doubled to K500 million from K250 million in the last one year.

She said the development of the Disability Management Information System was conducted with the support from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which she said had strengthened data collection capacity and analysis for the country.

The minister explained that the Government had decentralized the certification and registration process of persons with disabilities to the provincial level as well as some selected districts across the country.

According to first secretary for the Press in New York, Wallen Simwaka, Ms Kabanshi was speaking when she updated the UN Special Rapporteur Catalina Devandas Aguilar on the rights of persons with disabilities on actions on the recommendations made, saying Zambian Government was in the final stage in the development of the Disability Management Information System meant to collect data on persons with disabilities in the country.

“The Government of the Republic of Zambia has also increased funding for the social protection programmes in the 2017 national Budget, in particular, the Social Cash Transfer from K250 million in 2016 to K500 million.

‘‘The Social Cash Transfer programme has since been scaled up from 78 districts in 2016 to all the districts across the country and the number of beneficiaries is expected to increase from the current 242,000 households to more than 600,000,” she said.

Ms Kabanshi further said Zambia had made sure that the Seventh National Development Plan (SNDP) which was launched by President Edgar Lungu in Lusaka on Wednesday and other policies were disability-inclusive and had since mainstreamed disability as a cross-cutting issue.

She said the UN agencies in Zambia had designated the International Labour Organisation as their lead agency in mainstreaming and coordinating disability in their projects and programmes.