An urgent crisis is brewing in the ECD sector in South Africa related to the fallout from covid-19, the lockdown measures put in place in the past year, and the most recent ECD Employment Stimulus Relief Fund released by the Presidency, and being managed by the Department of Social Development.

It is clear that the proposed ECD Stimulus Package is fraught with challenges - especially with the end of the fiscal year so close; the ECD stimulus package must be paid out before the financial year ends and the deadline for applications from ECD workers ends this Friday 19 February (with only a two-week window having been available for applications to be made).

The ECD sector is calling on Government to urgently extend the deadline for applications to the Stimulus Relief Fund, and to address the many challenges currently being faced by ECD principals and practitioners on the ground, who are trying desperately to apply for this relief funding; a process which is currently exclusionary in nature. It is urgent that this process is altered in order to include informal unregistered ECD services in the rollout of this relief fund.

As at 15 February 2021, out of 29 836 ECD principals/owners who have started the application process, only 9 717 people have successfully completed their applications. This is not to mention the thousands of ECD centres and programmes who have not been able to start the application process. What’s worse is that the ECD stimulus package aims to pay 108 833 ECD workers, but only 46 661 ECD workers have been registered so far to receive this funding. This is shockingly low.

The ECD community urgently needs an inclusive and fair rollout of the Presidency’s ECD Employment Stimulus Relief Fund.  The first step (and by no means the last step) towards creating greater access to the Presidency’s ECD Employment Stimulus Relief Fund is extending the application deadline beyond this Friday, 19 February. An additional two weeks are requested, pushing the deadline to Friday, 5 March 2021. Given the unnecessarily complex and onerous process, the current two weeks which were given is not sufficient for ECD workers to complete an online application.

The ECD community is currently calling on the President, and the minister of Social Development to act now and impact “real lives and real livelihoods”.

Your signature will join others supporting this press release put out by the C-19 People's Coalition. To view the full statement, click here: https://c19peoplescoalition.org.za/extend-relief-funding-to-save-ecd-sector/