Just when we all thought drugs and corruption were the worst social menaces in the country, the Minister of Trade and Industry Rob Davies has called for a radical approach to the way South Africans consume alcohol.
And without doubt, the Eastern Cape Provincial Liquor Summit held in East London recently could pave the way for a radical change in the way South Africans consume alcohol in future. That’s if the minister gets his way.
According to Minister Davies, his department hopes to look closely into how the country’s citizens socialise with alcohol. “We need to strive for a balance between the economic opportunities from the liquor trade and the regulation of the liquor industry,” he said in a statement recently.
Davies argues that the “economic gains that the government receives from the liquor industry are far less than what it costs the government to deal with the socio-economic consequences of alcohol abuse”.
“We have been able to bite the bullet and have a measure of radicalism when it comes to our decisions about the liquor industry and its regulation in the future,” explained Minister Davies, who added that South Africa has an exceptionally huge and growing problem of alcohol abuse that the government has to curtail.
“We have concluded that the status quo is not working. We need to do things differently from the way we have been doing things up to now,” the minister explained, adding that alcohol abuse was costing the public sector a great deal.
Davies cited among other issues that alcohol is a major contributor to the high vehicle accidents on the country’s roads. He also linked alcohol to the high rate of domestic violence and violent crime in the country.
Davies also pointed out that “according to the study conducted some time ago, on average the cost of alcohol abuse to government is R37 billion a year. Recent estimates put the figure at a staggering R50 billion a year”.
This figure, said Davies, is in fact five times the budget of his department, pointing out that this is money spent on dealing with the consequences of alcohol abuse in the country. He said that the ministerial committee on substance abuse concluded that there was a need for a multifaceted strategy to deal with the problem.
Minister Davies also said that his department has made proposed that the legal age for drinking alcohol be raised from 18 to 21 years. The move has met with dissatisfaction from liquor traders around the country.
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Shame to those who prey on the elderly
We’ve become a nation of thieves, robbers, drunkards and con-men who will do anything to line their bottomless pockets with ill-gotten gains.
And the fact that those who are involved in these dirty money-making shenanigans don’t seem to care two hoots who they con to enrich themselves makes one sick to one’s stomach. Waylaying the elderly at pension pay-out points and conning them out of their meager pensions is the lowest form of thievery.
Worse still is when these con-men peddle fake traditional medicines and make false promises of healing pensioners’ ailing bodies.
Then you have pitiless loan sharks who think nothing of lending pensioners money at exorbitant interest that leaves many of them penniless.
It is sad when one considers the that many of these pensioners are actually breadwinners who use their pension money to feed neglected grandchildren and sometimes the unemployed parents of these children.
There are also insurance scammers who feel nothing of stealing from the aged and leaving them broke.
