Cutting expenditure is the bitter medicine we must swallow, but critical public servants mustn’t pay the price of looting by elites
26 February 2020
GOOD’s Brett Herron says:
1) Critical public servants mustn’t pay the price of looting by elites. Wage bill cuts mustn’t cull jobs we need: teachers, nurses, doctors, engineers, policemen and social workers.
2) The confirmation that the fight that De Lille started in 2016 – for municipalities to purchase their own electricity – is over is welcomed.
“No rise in VAT and some tax relief for taxpayers is welcome during this period of poor economic growth” said Brett Herron, the Secretary General of GOOD.
The government’s proposed R160 billion cut to the salary bill of government over the medium term “is the bitter medicine that our country must now swallow to recover from the years of rampant corruption and wasteful expenditure” said Herron.
GOOD cautions that it shouldn’t be the hardworking public servants who pay the price of rampant theft and corruption which has crippled our public service and resulted in a wage bill cut.
It is the high-flying politically connected who have crash-landed us and they must pay the price.
Experienced hard working public servants who can deliver and make government work more efficiently are needed to deliver on our government’s key mandates.
“We need to cut out the bloated executives so that we can save the jobs we need: our teachers, nurses, doctors, engineers, policemen and social workers” said Herron. “GOOD will continue to expose and oppose cadre appointments” he said. The additional billions allocated towards accelerating the fight against corruption are a good investment for the future of our country – we need to see the corrupt removed from leadership positions and put in prison, not parliament.
We welcome some of the personal income tax relief. This will help the families who are struggling and assist to increase the circulation of money through our economy saving jobs in sectors that are under strain.
Cuts in government spending to fund bailouts of Eskom and SAA are disappointing. We must get these entities under control. Settling SAA guarantees are unavoidable. We cannot default on loans and so we must swallow this bitter pill too. We hope that we can put this burden behind us in the near future and return public revenue to serving the public rather than debt.
Herron affirmed his support for more responsible spending from government and reiterated that “GOOD will NOT support the proposal to increase, by 24-42%, the budget and number of seats for provincial politicians”. This proposal from the DA has received support from the EFF and ANC, but Herron described it as “cruel and out of touch with what the country needs. We need to protect salaries of the critical staff we need – not cutting the country’s budget to employ more politicians!”
GOOD also welcomes the confirmation that municipalities will be able to purchase their own electricity.
In 2016, GOOD’s leader, Patricia de Lille, initiated the fight for municipalities to procure their own electricity directly from independent power producers. When she launched the court action against then Minister of Energy, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, De Lille said that she could not “sit back passively waiting to be crippled by Eskom’s rapidly escalating electricity prices."
The rights of municipalities to procure their own electricity will mean that they will be able to “reduce the long-term electricity costs for our residents and provide a greater measure of protection against energy insecurity and Eskom’s load shedding" said De Lille. De Lille has a long history of advocating for reducing climate change impacts and accelerating the switch to safer renewable energy.
Issued by Brett Herron, Secretary General for GOOD, 26 February 2020
