DIRCO’s refusal to reduce budget is an affront to jobseekers
21 January 2016
The DA is gravely concerned about the Department of International Relations and Cooperation’s (DIRCO), statement yesterday saying “there are no plans to cut costs” in all of SA’s foreign missions and embassies – even in the non-trade specific countries.
The DA urges, DIRCO Minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, to review the strategic importance of non-trade specific missions and to urgently make recommendations to Treasury for the budget to be appropriately reduced.
At a time when unemployment is at its zenith, DIRCO should be reducing spending at non-strategic foreign missions that do not bolster economic trade that will result in more jobs being created.
Even more worrying is that DIRCO received an additional R700-million for the 2015/2016 financial year to offset fluctuations in foreign exchange spending. Surely, Treasury should be discouraging DIRCO from more expenditure, disbursing an additional R700-million to help with spending more in dollars is only encouraging non-strategic and fruitless spending, at the cost of the taxpayer.