While many might applaud the national budget, we believe that government is on the right track with its measures to try and alleviate poverty through education and increasing social grants (the disability grant has increased by R60 to R1200). We agree that healthcare also deserves a significant portion of the budget. However, we feel that just as money is allocated for such projects, government needs to look at the subdivision of these allocations to ensure that essential services are available to visually impaired persons.

Schools for visually impaired children, FET and Higher Education facilities need to be made accessible as well. The Department of Health needs to address the serious concern and backlog in the system of eradicating all forms of avoidable, preventable and curable blindness (which is as much as 80% that can be cured through simple and easy procedures).

We believe that by investing in these areas, the strain on government to hand out social grants will decrease because we will have more productive, effective and trained visually impaired persons contributing to the economy and helping to make South Africa grow.

Shakira Hoosain
Communications Officer
South Africa National Council for the Blind [2]