COSATU to Present its Submission to Parliament’s Medium Term Budget and Appropriation Adjustment Bill Hearings tomorrow

November 28, 2019

COSATU will present its submission and proposals to Parliament’s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement public hearings at 9am Friday 29 November, M514, Marks Building, Parliament.

South Africa’s faces its greatest economic and governance crises since 1994:

· Unemployment is at 40% and the highest since 2008;

· 1000s of workers are retrenched monthly;

· 400 000 new job seekers enter the economy annually;

· A fragile 1% GDP growth;

· Declining tax revenues;

· A loss of 10% of the budget to wasteful expenditure and corruption annually;

· Unsustainable and rising levels of debt;

· Eskom and other SOEs facing collapse; and

· South Africa on the verge of being declared below investment grade in February 2020.

Despite these massive crises, government failed to produce any detailed and serious plans to turn the economy, unemployment levels, the state, SOEs, taxes and expenditure around.

Instead ,we saw attacks on the right of public servants to earn a living wage, endless dithering by government on how to stabilise and save the SOEs in particular Eskom, no accountability for the billions lost to corruption or departments which fail to spend their budgets and meet their targets.

At the same time key service delivery departments are failing to spend their allocated funding or meet their targets. This includes the Departments of Basic Education, Higher Education and Training, Water and Sanitation, Human Settlements, Energy, SARS, SAPS, Correctional Services, State Security, Transport, Environmental Affairs, Small Business Development, Health and Cooperative Governance.

COSATU will share its various proposals to address the crises facing workers in the economy, Eskom, the state, SARS etc.

The federation will not wait for government to have some sort of Damascus moment and expect Treasury to present a credible budget in February. COSATU has been and will be engaging the President and leadership of the Alliance and government urgently to see how best these existential crises can be addressed. Workers cannot afford to wait any longer for politicians or business to wake up to the crises decimating workers.

For further information please contact: Cde Matthew Parks- COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator

Cell: 082 785 0687