'Women's rights are not in the budget'

The government budget does not see women's rights as a priority, stated a Women's Legal Centre report released last week.

The report, "Eye on the Money: Women and Government Priorities in South Africa" studied four key departments - justice, health, police, and rural development and land reform.

The report noted that, of the four, the Department of Justice and Correctional Services had the highest level of "fruitless and wasteful expenditure" - R39-million in the 2012/2013 financial year.

In the same period, the department failed to improve court structures and hire additional prosecutors for sexual offences cases.

In addition, less than 1% of court clerks were dedicated to domestic violence cases and more than half of the courts did not have domestic violence divisions, even though there were almost 247000 civil and 117000 criminal cases relating to domestic violence.

This, the report stated, rendered court services "hopelessly inadequate".

Of the department's 55 targets for the 2013/14 year, 31 (or almost 60%) were not achieved "largely due to inadequate monitoring of performance against targets", the report stated.

Co-author of the report Joy Watson said: "Government is failing the needs of women."

Other findings in the report were that:

• Police officers lack training on the Domestic Violence Act;
• Healthcare community workers' conditions have not improved, which has led to shortages of essential medicines and equipment; and
• W omen have had "minimal opportunities" to access land and are often reliant on their husbands or fathers for such access, and land reform policy did little to redress the "vulnerability" of women.