The Ministry of Gender Equality, Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare on Monday handed over its government functions of social welfare to the country’s 14 regional councils.

Deputy Minister of Gender Equality, Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare, Bernadette Jagger represented her ministry when she signed off the functions to the chairpersons of each regional council.

The Minister of Urban and Rural Development, Erastus Uutoni under which the regional councils fall, also signed as a witness for the government’s decentralisation transition.

Uutoni in his remarks said the social welfare function is an important arm of government as it plays a pivotal role in the lives of pensioners, orphans and people living with disabilities.

He said it is this function that is in charge of the old-age, disability and orphans’ social grants, as well as the funeral benefits of pensioners.

“Therefore to have this function reporting to the regional councils, it means bringing its essential services closer to the people it is intended to serve,” he said.

The function joins the regional councils with its human personnel, authority and all its capital resources, said Uutoni.

The minister expressed excitement to see the regional councils in the country being empowered by the government’s decentralisation programme and urged other government ministries to speed up the transitional processes so that people at grassroot levels and settlements can start to access their services through the constituencies and regional councils easily and faster.

The ministries of education, works, information, lands and health are amongst others that have already decentralised some of their functions to the 14 regions through the regional councils, said Uutoni.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency