Women entrepreneurs face uphill battle - Minister Kubayi

HUMAN Settlements Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi highlighted the uphill struggles that women entrepreneurs face when starting or growing their businesses.

Kubayi was speaking at a human settlements women indaba that was held on August 20 in Kimberley.

She stated that the challenges included lack of access to finances, gender bias, gender discrimination and a lack of education and training.

“Women also have to fight the expectation that women are the only members of the household that should be balancing work and family life - often to their disadvantage. Women are not able to break into the support networks that share their understandings and goals,” said the minister.

“Collectively, these challenges have placed women at a disadvantaged economic status. The role of women in economic transformation should be centred around breaking these barriers.”

Kubayi added that provinces were supposed to allocate 40 percent of available grants towards procurement for women, which translated into R11 billion.

“There are provinces that are implementing this policy directive well and others are still lagging. We will establish a task team to work with and to report by March 2024 on where the money is being spent. Women in each sub-sector must be nominated to be part of the task team and all provinces will be expected to report back to the ministerial meeting with members of executive committees (MinMec).”

She stated that five percent of the Informal Settlements Upgrading Partnership Grant would be directed towards repositioning densely built informal settlements into clusters instead of the current improvised order of these ever-growing settlements.

“These resources will help open pathways and roads for emergency vehicles and other services including the provision of water, electricity and sewerage. The re-blocking will allow disaster interventions to proactively deal with disastrous fire emergencies in provinces and municipalities, which often lead to loss of lives and the complete destruction of property - almost daily.”

Kubayi indicated that the Prevention of Illegal Eviction and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act should be reviewed to strengthen laws against land invasion and illegal occupation.

“It also makes it difficult to move people once they have settled – mostly in urban areas. However, the reality is that 80 percent of people in informal settlements do not qualify for housing and hence the Social Housing Regulatory Authority is tasked to increase capacity in the social housing rental spaces.”