Tomorrow all eyes will be on Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s crucial Budget Speech in Parliament – and the Congress of South African Trade Union (Cosatu) waits with anticipation and apprehension.
One of their main issues is that the National Treasury should not increase income tax on lower- and middle-income earners again but should increase taxes on the rich, beneficiation – or value-added processing of mineral exports, luxury goods, luxury imports and sin taxes. The federation stated that with the economy stagnating and haemorrhaging jobs at an alarming rate, this budget comes at a very difficult time for workers. Cosatu national spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said poverty levels were deepening and inequalities worsening.
“Government has made far too little progress in addressing the level of employment and the 34 percent long-term unemployment cannot be ignored anymore,” said Pamla.
“We have been in an economic crisis for four decades and not simply since Minister Nhlanhla Nene’s [former minister of finance] removal. Our massive levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality are a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and are as a result of a lack of economic transformation. The only outcome of our failure to deal with unemployment will be social instability.”
He added that the creation of jobs was all too often a task simply left to the departments of trade and industry and economic development. He said, “We need to be creating at least 100 000 jobs per month in order to absorb new labour market entrants and to reduce our long-term unemployment.”
The union expects the government to mandate all government departments and other spheres to drive job creation. However, Pamla added the government had done admirable work in investing in public infrastructure.
Cosatu said much more needed to be done in the mining, manufacturing, textile, automotive, agriculture, aquaculture, transport and tourism sectors. “We expect the budget to look at supporting and consolidating this work by [the trade and industry] department. More must be done to support and stimulate beneficiation as a key to saving and sustaining our battered mining sector,” Pamla said.
Cosatu’s main expectations are:
- The federation expects adequate resources to be provided for the newly created state-owned pharmaceutical company to ensure that it can fulfil its developmental mandate of delivering affordable medicine.
- The budget should speak to the issue of a fully-funded National Health Insurance. Cosatu said this could not be delayed forever and the government must not buckle under pressure from the medical industry which has grown fat on exorbitant medical aid fees.
- This budget should ensure that pensioners are given annual increases well above inflation levels.
- The education system should be sufficiently funded and the union is worried that most township schools remain woefully under-resourced.
- According to Cosatu, the minister’s speech should ensure that tertiary education is made accessible and affordable to all deserving students. The government must stop punishing lower- and middle-income families who have borne the brunt of retrenchments, unemployment, low wages, job insecurities and declining conditions, it said.
