The Democratic Alliance (DA) will write to the Minister for Social Development (DSD) Lindiwe Zulu regarding the directive she signed on the safe reopening of Early Childhood Development (ECD) programmes and partial care facilities after being hauled to court in June 2020.
The directive conflates the issues of the safe reopening of registered and conditionally registered ECDs with the Minister’s mass ECD registration campaign, Vangasali, and does not honour the court’s ruling handed down 6 July 2020.
The ruling stipulated that registered and conditionally registered ECDs as well as partial care facilities which were operating at the beginning of the nationwide lockdown may open immediately with the necessary Covid-19 health and safety protocols in place. Furthermore, that the best interest of the child must be upheld first and foremost as stated in the Children’s Act, 38 of 2005 and section 28 of the South African Constitution.
These issues must be dealt with separately as the needs and requirements of registered and conditional registered ECDs are very different to that of an unregistered ECD.
Unregistered ECDs are not a new phenomenon to the DSD. The fundamentals of the ECD registration process is flawed and a ‘one size fits all’ approach has shown no evidence of success.
The declaration included in this directive requiring unregistered ECDs to apply to register within 6 months of signing the document, is both financially and logistically impractical at this stage. More so, when the R64.5m conditional grant meant for ECD infrastructure was just repurposed for personal protective equipment (PPE) distribution.
In her directive, Minister Zulu once again instructs ECDs to comply with the DSD’s extensive and impractical Covid-19 Standard Operating Procedures which at very best alienates ECDs servicing lower income communities.
The Minister seems to only complicate an important directive that should be easily comprehendible to the thousands of ECD operators in order for them to continue the important work of educating, feeding and safeguarding our country’s most precious resource, the children.