ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on social security benefits for disabled people. The social security system is advanced in some respects, in a context of widespread dire poverty. State social benefits have been implemented gradually since the beginning of the century. They fall into the conventional categories of child and family care, benefits for disabled people, benefits for elderly people, and social relief. The response of the welfare section of the government was to assign social workers to work on community development projects to help people out of poverty. In the state social benefits sphere, the new legislation is very problematic. The old Social Pensions Act had pensions and grants as universal rights, subject to means tests. The very name of the new law, the Social Assistance Act, marks a change in attitude, and it converts the benefits from being a right to being discretionary.
