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BL Premium reports that Department of Employment and Labour (DEL) Minister Thulas Nxesi, who is tasked with addressing the country’s spiralling unemployment rate, has spent nearly R2m on official trips abroad since President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed him to the portfolio in 2019.
A reply to a parliamentary question submitted by the Democratic Alliance (DA) showed that Nxesi had been on official trips to Botswana, Brazil, Cuba, France, Switzerland and the Ivory Coast. The DA’s Michael Cardo indicated the following on Wednesday: “The total amount spent on accommodation and flights was R1,693,390.13, while the minister helped himself to daily allowances amounting to R88,714.17. This includes a whopping R403,923.79 on flights and accommodation to Brazil alone, where the minister attended a Brics ministerial meeting in September 2019.” This is not the first time Nxesi has come under fire for international travel. In 2019, his department was criticised for sending a 62-member delegation to a 12-day International Labour Organization (ILO) conference in Geneva. Cardo commented that with the expanded unemployment rate sitting at more than 45% and the runaway cost of living, “marked by punishing fuel and food prices hitting the poor and the jobless the hardest”, it seemed particularly callous for Nxesi to be “gallivanting around the globe at taxpayers’ expense”.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Luyolo Mkentane at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
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