Samwu dispirited by finance minister budget speech
JOBURG – The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) was unimpressed by Minster of Finance, Nhlanhla Nene’s speech as he tabled the Mid Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS), as the union felt that economic growth is slowing down and there was no sign of relief.
The union said it was an indication that government needed to get its house in order and address challenges that South Africans are facing, in particular, unemployment and underemployment.
Samwu deputy general secretary, Simon Mathe, said the statement came at a time when employers had launched an offensive against the working class with looming retrenchments across all sectors, including State-owned entities such as Telkom and the South African Post Office.
Mathe said, “The slowing down of economic growth should be a cause for concern… The country’s unemployment rates are at unacceptable levels, the majority of those that are fortunate enough to get employed receive slave wages. We firmly believe that in the interest of stimulating the economy, government should create an enabling environment for job creation across all sectors of the economy so as to increase government revenue for the delivery of quality services to all South Africans.”
The union stated that the minister could not blame the salary increases recently received by public servants for the shortfall, unless he was insinuating that workers should not have received the increase, an increase which was a compromise from the initial demands.
However, the union was happy that there had been no indication of an increase in income tax as a source for increasing government expenditure. “South African workers, in particular, municipal workers, cannot afford any more tax increases. Government has to come up with a way of increasing tax contributors through job creation, implementation of a national minimum wage and increasing corporate tax and that of the rich,” Mathe said.
The union was also disappointed that the treasury had forged ahead with the sale of public assets which it had deemed non-strategic, and the union said that was nothing short of the privatisation of State-owned assets.
On a positive note, the union welcomed the decision to continue with financial assistance for municipalities to provide free basic services. “We are, however, of the view that the treasury is not doing citizens a favour by providing free services to those that cannot afford them. We firmly believe that the denial of basic services as a result of one’s economic condition is tantamount to gross human rights violations,” he said.
Mathe said it was heart-breaking that in the midst of high unemployment levels and exploitation of workers, the National Treasury was forging ahead with the employment tax incentive, notoriously known as the Youth Wage Subsidy, by allocating billions to this scheme. The union believed that the subsidy would not address unemployment but would rather replace older workers with younger ones. “This is the same as robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he remarked.
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