LABOUR federation COSATU hopes the upcoming budget speech on Wednesday will respond decisively to the many challenges facing the country, including unemployment, corruption, ailing state-owned entities (SOEs) and municipalities.
Finance minister Enoch Godongwana is expected to deliver his maiden budget speech on Wednesday.
The federation said the unemployment rate was at an all-time high at 46%, while thousands of businesses have closed, and billions lost to corruption and wasteful expenditure.
“Many State-Owned Entities and municipalities are collapsing,”said Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla.
“The Budget needs to respond to these problems and give details to some of the commitments announced by the President in the State of the Nation Address. What we cannot afford is a weak budget that merely offers platitudes. This moment calls for bold and decisive leadership and an aggressive response by government to turn things around.”
Pamla said the labour federation expects the Budget speech to double funding for the Presidential Employment Stimulus to ensure it creates at least 2 million job opportunities to help young people earn a salary, acquire experience, and enhance public services.
He added that the budget also needs to provide for more funding in order to extend the R350 SRD Grant and narrow the gap with the food poverty level of R624.
He said the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework needed to budget for its extension and use it as a foundation for a basic income grant.
Pamla said Cosatu was also calling for the urgent interventions ‘to save Transnet and PRASA from destruction, including making resources available to protect the railway lines, and banning the sale and export of scrap copper. Transnet and PRASA are key to saving and creating mining, agriculture, and manufacturing jobs and to ensuring that workers in the cities can arrive at work safely, on time and at affordable prices.”
Said Pamla:“The government must spare South Africa another tepid budget. We don’t need a budget that outsources turning the economy around and slashing unemployment to the vagaries of the market. This will be a relinquishment of leadership. Workers expect better from the government that they elected to office.”
- * Inside Politics
