Today, in our country, parents who don’t pay child maintenance do not face the full might of the law.
People who do not pay their bills have their credit record affected, but child maintenance defaulters currently do not.
You can be blacklisted for not paying for a fridge or television, but not for failing to pay child maintenance.
This needs to be rectified given that an estimated 9 million children are growing up in South Africa without fathers. From 1996 to 2009, the proportion of living fathers who are absent from their children’s lives increased from 42% to 48%.
True transformation means more and more people getting out of poverty and being able to use their freedoms.
Most children born to single parents in South Africa today will be born into poverty. This applies particularly to teenage girls who have babies. With an absent father and a “child-mother”, these babies are usually doomed to a life of poverty and marginalization.
Reinstate Clause 11
The ANC have decided to remove Clause 11 of the Maintenance Amendment Bill currently being discussed in Parliament.
Clause 11 allows for the blacklisting of maintenance defaulters.
By backtracking on black-listing as the most effective means of ensuring that people pay maintenance, the ANC is in fact supporting non-payment.
The DA will not stand for this. We commit ourselves to a campaign to ensure that clause 11 is reinstated and that maintenance defaulters face the full might of the law.
We are therefore in support of a Maintenance Amendment Bill that includes:
- Mechanisms for inter-agency co-operation to locate maintenance defaulters;
- Provisions to “black-list” and limit the credit-worthiness of maintenance defaulters;
- Means of naming and shaming maintenance defaulters
- As a last resort, the freezing of bank accounts.
We call on all parties who share our concern for the rights of South Africa’s children to support the inclusion of Clause 11 in the final version of the Maintenance Amendment Bill.
Tags: pay your maintenance
kougademocrat 
Leave a Reply