NEHAWU statement on the 2021 budget speech
24 February 2021
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU) notes the tabling of the 2021 Appropriation Bill, 2021 Special Appropriation Bill, 2021 Division of Revenue Bill, Budget Review, and the Estimates of National Expenditure by the Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni, in Parliament today. Once again, NEHAWU reiterates its rejection of government’s Neoliberal Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan (ERRP) and its underpinning fiscal policy.
The committed R791.2 billion for infrastructure is little more than borrowed money for rents that are going to be given to private businesses, since the “user-pay” principle would be imposed on the citizens. Thus, members of the public, the so-called users, are ultimately going to pay for such infrastructure projects in addition to taxes collected and misallocated into the blended-finance Infrastructure Fund. The spectacular failure and public rejection of the Gauteng e-tolls is but a practical example of the folly of such new-fangled public-private-partnership projects. We are opposed to the current short cuts that are being employed such as what is happening at ESKOM in terms of the unbundling and the privatisation of that family silver.
However, we welcome the extension of unemployment insurance benefits through the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) for another three months to April 2021 as well as the Special COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant. NEHAWU calls for the urgent implementation of the Basic Income Grant as part of a comprehensive social security system.
Amidst the deepening inequalities, poverty and rising unemployment, it is out of nothing but Neoliberal dogmatic madness that the Treasury announces that “corporate income tax rate will be lowered to 27%”, whilst at the same time it tables expenditure cuts in health and education by 5, 1% and 5, 9% from 2020/21 to 2023/24, respectively. Not to mention, the 12, 1% cut in policing over the same period, amidst high-crime rate and rampant gender-based violence. It is therefore disgraceful that Minister Mboweni brazenly lies in Parliament that this is “this is not an austerity budget”.