President Cyril Ramaphosa has met with unions to address the myriad of challenges facing the country with government also proposing to cut spending in the midst of the cash crunch.
Ramaphosa and labour agreed to find a solution to these challenges and grow the economy.
The president’s meeting with Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu), the Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa) and National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu) comes after he met with big business a few months ago when business promised to help government to fight crime and corruption.
Business had also promised to address some of the other challenges facing the state.
The criminality in copper theft has led to Transnet losing billions of rands a year. It was reported recently that only 25 percent of the railway line was fully operational but the other sections have been damaged and vandalised.
The damage to infrastructure has threatened the economy. The energy crisis has also affected many businesses and it was said billions have been lost in the economy.
Ramaphosa said they agreed with the unions on Tuesday to address challenges facing the country.
“The meeting discussed amongst other issues the immediate measures needed to unblock economic growth and create employment. Participants agreed that urgent steps must be taken to deal with low growth and the unemployment crisis,” he said.
“Organised labour committed to working with government to end load shedding and achieve energy security, improve the efficiency of the freight logistics system and reduce violent crime and protect economic infrastructure,” said Ramaphosa.
“Representatives from organised labour raised several related issues including the current fiscal situation, the structure of the economy, state-owned enterprises, strengthening the public services, tackling crime and corruption, local government and providing economic and social relief, particularly to poor South Africans,” he said.
“Given the scale of the challenge, we require support from all social partners to urgently accelerate implementation of government’s plans and drive additional interventions. While there is encouraging progress, the energy shortfall remains the single biggest constraint on economic growth. We need to accelerate and expand our efforts even further, not only to overcome the immediate crisis, but to fundamentally reform our energy sector and ensure that we never face such a shortfall again.”
The unions have been up in arms over proposals by National Treasury to implement austerity measures.
National Treasury has proposed to cut the budgets of departments.
But more details will be made public when Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana tables the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement in Parliament.
The MTBPS was initially scheduled for the end of October, but parliament agreed last week in its meeting to move it to November 1.
The government is also working on the reconfiguration of the state.
Ramaphosa said more details will be made after the elections next year.
The African National Congress has proposed that the department of public enterprises must be scrapped and entities falling under it must be taken to line departments.
Deputy Minister of Public Enterprises Obed Bapela confirmed this in parliament two weeks ago when he told the portfolio committee on public enterprises that work was already underway to do away with the department.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
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