JOHANNESBURG - With National Child Protection Week on the horizon, concerns are mounting over the safety of our young ones.
Child protection group Badisa is struggling to provide essential services with limited resources.
Their plea for increased funding from the government has gone unanswered.
Badisa CEO Basie van Wyk says the plea seems to be falling on deaf ears as the department has not been responsive to their letters of request for funding.
"We receive funding from the government but the extent of the funding has decreased significantly over time, and we have not received any subsidies for the last four years," he said.
"The subsidy that we do receive equates approximately per social worker to 42 percent of the salary of the social worker employed directly by the department of the state development.
"So we experience as a result of that a very high turnover rate of social workers because the salaries we can offer is linked directly to that subsidy and that puts the services that we render at risk."