PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa has ordered the withdrawal of the new Ministerial handbook proposing free services, including water and electricity, for Cabinet Ministers and Deputy Ministers, according to spokesman Vincent Magwenya.
Magwenya hosted a media briefing at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Monday.
He said the president acknowledged the public sentiment on the issue.
“President Ramaphosa has ordered the withdrawal process of the presidential minute on the Executive Memebers’ guide – commonly known as the ministerial handbook – of 2022. The withdrawal will give effect to the 2019 version of the guide, pending a review,” Magwenya said.
“The president has listened. The president appreciates the public outcry in the context of economic socio pressures South Africans are facing. We can take heart in the fact that the President has ordered the withdrawal of this; however, the impression created that the amendments were conducted in secrecy and to avoid public scrutiny is false.”
Reports over the last two weeks have highlighted other luxuries and perks afforded to ministers by the ministerial handbook, including free water and electricity – paid for by taxpayers, and the freedom to purchase luxury vehicles up to R800,000.
Labour federation COSATU has also called for the scrapping of the perks, calling them “vulgar and tone deaf” while the country suffers under load shedding, water shortages and a growing cost of living crisis underpinned by high levels of unemployment.
“It is extremely insensitive for this administration to cushion off the members of the executive while imposing extreme sacrifices on the workers and the unemployed,” COSATU said.
“These are the same people who have mismanaged the power utility to the ground over the past sixteen years, and this has seen consumers being subjected to continuous double-digit and above-inflation electricity tariff hikes. This is the very same executive that has mismanaged the water crises in South Africa, leading to water shedding and water restrictions.”
Earlier, the Democratic Alliance (DA) threatened to mobilise civil society groups to march on government ministers’ private residences if Ramaphosa does not scrap the controversial ministerial handbook.
The party has given Ramaphosa an ultimatum to do away with the ministerial perks and luxuries enjoyed at taxpayers’ expense by end of the week, failing which it will march on Bryntirion Estate in Pretoria.
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