An idea for a more effective social grant system

I was just reading a user letter on News24 about the effectiveness of AA, and had this idea.  I do not disagree with the fact that previously disadvantaged people need a hand up in life, but I do disagree wholeheartedly with the way it was implemented.  My reason for disagreeing…

In the large parastatals, highly skilled people were replaced willy-nilly, without making sure that the replacements could actually do the job that was expected from them, and without making sure that there was some kind of knowledge transfer on exactly what was required in these jobs.

As we all know, this has come back to bite the country in a big way.

I’ve said this before, and stand by my words, that AA should be implemented at a education level first of all, our kids should have the best education possible.  For this to succeed, they obviously would need a stable life with a roof over their head and food in their mouth.  This is where social grants come in.  Another flawed system.  In SA you get a social grant based on how many kids you have in your household.  But at no point do anyone make sure that the kids actually get any benefit from the grant.

How do we fix this?  

Not so easy, but doable.  I say that the person receiving the grant, should be forced to prove that they are actually making sure that every child they receive a grant for is getting the education the kid deserves.  There should be pressure on the kids to learn, and perform well at school, otherwise they lose the “stability” that the grant is supposed to bring.  

Currently, there is no pressure on the parent to do anything for the kids with the money they receive, and in my opinion, a lot of this grant money is definitely not spent on the children, it is spent on alcohol & drugs.

This is just my idea on how to make a slight improvement to the children’s lives, I’ll leave the implementation of it to the people in government, by now you should have picked up the skills to implement ideas…