EFF proposed economic measures to combat Covid-19
23 March 2020
1. All banks must initiate a payment holiday on the following loans:
a. Home loans
b. Vehicle finance loans
c. Credit card and overdraft repayments
d. Loans i.e. personal, student and business loans
Note: Banks should not be allowed to retrench workers during the payment holiday initiative,
and all payment initiatives should be for a minimum of 4 months.
2. Government must pay all workers who earn below R15 000 a once off grant of R3 500 for food and hygiene essentials.
3. Government must prohibit all evictions whether they be of occupied land or tenant residence, and all rental payments must be suspended.
4. Property owners must receive a subsidy to mitigate the impact of defaulting on rental
payments.
5. All service providers such as Multichoice, Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, Cell C and others should suspend debit orders and service fees for 4 months.
6. All municipalities should extend the period of payment of property rates, water and electricity by 30 additional working days, and no municipality or Eskom should be allowed to disconnect services.
7. Government must publish price guidelines of the following products:
a. Bread, milk, flour and maize meal
b. Vegetables and fruits
c. Soap and sanitisers
8. Vodacom, MTN, Cell C, Telkom and all other network service providers should give all customers (RICA SIM card) a daily free 200MB, 15 free talk minutes free network
to network and 15 minutes for all other networks.
9. South African Revenue Services (SARS) should pay all outstanding refunds due
within 5 working days.
10. Government must give companies and individuals tax rebates and breaks, grants for
small and medium business with workers to cover salaries on a condition that there
are no retrenchments, and the South African Reserve Bank should make available a
credit facility for banks with the directive that banks must lend to small and medium
businesses.
11. All government departments, state-owned companies and municipalities must pay outstanding verifiable invoices where work was done and completed according to the requirements within the next 10 working days, and strong measures should be put in place to deal decisively with corruption.
12. Government working with National Arts Council, National Heritage Council, National Film and Video Foundation, and all arts and heritage houses must establish a relief fund to pay artists who have cancelled and postponed verifiable projects. A once off allocation of 30% of the artists anticipated income must be paid to them directly.
13. The Department of Sports, Arts and Culture, the National Arts Council and the National Lottery must not fund any new work. They must use that money, together with the funding of cancelled festivals, to compensate artists who were contracted to do work at all official theatres in the country.
Issued by Vuyani Pambo, National Spokesperson, EFF, 23 March 2020
