Getting By On My Grant

Times are getting tougher, but what if a child support grant is your lifeline? Karen Lallu tells us how she and her four kids live off her monthly State stipend.

- Aphiwe Boyce

EVERY year she watches closely, hoping it will bring some sort of relief. But this year Karen Lallu missed the Budget Speech because she was working an odd job to help supplement the State welfare grants she gets every month.

The mother-of-three, who is also an informal foster mother of one child, is one of the coun try’s 12,8 million child support grant recipients. If it wasn’t for the money she receives from the Government every month, she and her kids would not be able to fight the grinding poverty that threatens to overwhelm them.

Life has not been easy for the former bank teller from Eldorado Park in Johannesburg since she lost her job in 2005. The 35-year-old uses the money she gets monthly in child grants to care for her three children, Leighlein (12), Lindre (7), Cassie (5) and a niece, Cazlien (11), who lost her parents when she was a baby.

Every month Karen spends R350 on electricity, about R800 on groceries and the rest on sundry household expenses. The groceries usually run out mid-month and she battles to feed the kids.

Then there’s the R700 she pays annually in school fees for Leighlin and Cazlien. The fees for Cassie, who is at a different school, are about R800 a year.

Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan’s Budget Speech did not bring great hope. The grant increase was basically to keep up with inflation – and is actually little more than an increase of R20 to R30 per grant. But at least it helps Karen to get by.