Duma Gqubule castigates the finance minister for a “reckless and irresponsible” budget because public service wages have to share the pain with shareholders, entrepreneurs and consumers, pain that in no small measure is due to years of overemployment of cadres, unqualified friends and even state capturers (“Mboweni’s budget is a declaration of war on public servants”, February 26).
The wage-earning section has occasioned wasteful expenditure in the form of above-inflation increments. Eskom, SAA and other state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have unnecessarily employed hundreds of thousands of people who cannot now morally escape the inevitable adjustments. Fulmination against measures to ease the economic disaster ignores the fact that, important though social considerations are, they have to come a long way down the list, after successful action to free up the economy.
Until the economy is freed from harsh employment regulation and corruption, even the poor cannot prosper. It is amazing and sad that social bias so frequently ignores the truth that sound governance strives for a balance between economic support and social sympathy, when a thriving economy can benefit both goals.
The minister has to manage the entire fiscal scenario while vested sections such as unions and bloated public servants can only see their own interests, which happen to be part of the disaster.
Gavin Barnett
Somerset West
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