Johannesburg - The Medium-Term Budget Policy statement is yet again upon us, and political parties, trade unions, and civil society have presented what they think Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana should be focusing on Wednesday in his address.
The Public Servants Association (PSA) has said that they would like real pay increases for public service employees at provincial and national departments as their salaries are lagging far behind those of employees of state-owned entities.
The trade union would also like to see the filling of vacancies in the public service and funds to absorb health-care workers and assistant educators as it is clear that they are needed as part of resources to provide much-needed services to communities.
"The PSA is further extremely concerned about inefficiency in many departments as 'incapable cadres' are not able to spend allocated money.
Should the minister fail to consider the capacitation of departments by filling vacancies, ensuring proper remuneration of employees, and providing funding for infrastructure and working tools, the government can forget about building a developmental and capable state," said the trade union.
Civil society organisation Equal Education (EE) have highlighted the crisis in the education system of the country which they believe is due to defunding.
They say that the MTBPS must not just be business as usual, but that schools must get the money needed to tackle the many challenges they experience.
"Despite the persistent problems, basic education seems to have fallen off government’s priorities. While education continues to be one of government’s largest spending items, between 2016 and 2020, basic education got an increasingly smaller share of government’s overall spending, with Covid-19 making things worse," the organisation said.
EE further highlighted that even though school infrastructure received an increase of R700 million in February’s budget, more money will be needed to address the current school infrastructure backlog.
"For instance, the minister of basic education stated earlier this year that an additional R5 billion is needed to address the current overcrowding crisis alone," added EE.
Secretary general of the Good party Brett Herron said that the budget comes at a time of extreme socio-economic challenges in South Africa and the world.
"More money needs to go into the hands of vulnerable people, and less to politicians and failing institutions. Through a firm commitment to zero-based budgeting, government must eradicate inefficient spending that doesn’t return value for money," he said.
DA spokesperson on finance Dion George said that uncertain energy supply coupled with an unstable political environment has drastically affected the development of South Africa and severely limited the growth potential of the economy.
"There has been much talk regarding solutions for South Africa’s electricity crisis, yet after 15 years of living under scarce energy supply, not enough has been done," said George.
With the grim energy outlook, he reiterated his party’s call for privatisation of Eskom and the opening up of the energy sector to Independent Power Producers (IPPs) as continued state ownership of the entity has not served to benefit the poor.
"We reject any plan to transfer Eskom’s debt onto the national balance sheet," he said.
The Star