INPUT BY THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE COMMUNITY
CONSTITUENCY: ELROY PAULUS
In his opening, Mr Paulus emphasised that Social dialogue
remained a critical instrument to bring about participatory policy
changes, to address the plethora of inherited and emerging
challenges in South Africa's young democracy.
Mr Paulus emphasised the relevance of Nedlac in addressing the
following social challenges facing the country:
- Access to health, water, sanitation, housing and food which
remained huge challenges that required the social partners to
utilise Nedlac more effectively in the fight to eradicate poverty
and create decent jobs;
- Nedlac social partners to deliberate on the strategy on poverty
dimensions that would cover all sections of society;
- South Africa's social security system should demonstrate
greater social solidarity, and in so doing, it would be providing
protection for everyone, by allowing cross redistribution from the
rich to the poor, the healthy to the ill, the employed to the
unemployed and so forth. In addition, all economic policies,
administration should be transparent and accountable to democratic
structures, in which organs of civil society fully participated;
and
- Government to ensure better coordination in line with service
delivery whilst gearing towards the 4th Democratic
elections.
Finally, he stated that at the Community constituency's workshop
held a week prior to the Nedlac Summit, it was proposed that the
National Co-operatives Association of South Africa (NCASA) should
work closely with Government in promoting Co-operatives as a
mechanism to help bring about socio-economic development. Both
production and consumer co-operatives must be part of the national
strategy to weather the global financial storm.