BL Premium reports that trade union federations have called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to move away from economic policies have led to an unemployment rate of nearly 35% and were “suffocating the economy”.
They want the president to announce the changes when he delivers his state of the nation address (SONA) on Thursday. Cosatu’s Sizwe Pamla said the government needed to acknowledge that the deepening socioeconomic crises in SA came from “the misguided macroeconomic policy framework” implemented over the years. Ramaphosa should provide a frank assessment of what needed to be done and clear interventions to turn the country around, said Pamla. Interventions critical to growing the economy and rebuilding the state included speedy rebuilding of power utility Eskom to ensure reliable and affordable electricity. The government also needed to extend the R350 social relief of distress grant beyond March and increase it to meet the food poverty line of R624, so it could be used as a foundation for a basic income grant. Pamla also said the president needed to address the contentious issue of SA companies that were “playing poor foreign workers against poor South African workers”, with the department of employment & labour, the department of home affairs and other relevant state institutions enforcing “the current labour and immigration laws to combat this problem.” Cosatu called for more support for the presidential employment programme in the 2022 budget, to create an additional 2-million “badly needed jobs”. The SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) wants Ramaphosa to focus on job creation so that the “12.5-million people in this country who are not in any form of employment, education and training may be able to find work”. Saftu called for an end to “austerity measures” and a basic income grant of R1,500.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Luyolo Mkentane at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
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