Budget Vote 28: Labour

In Zuptastan the Labour Ministry doesn’t care about jobs

by Ian Ollis MP – DA Shadow Minister of Labour

24 May 2017

Note to editors: The following speech was delivered in Parliament today by the DA’s Shadow Minister of Labour,Ian Ollis MP, during the Budget Vote on Labour.

In the post 2008 global economic meltdown, countries have been scrambling to create jobs by any possible means.

Except here in Zuptastan in the South.

In the USA, where the credit meltdown started, Barack Obama introduced stimulation packages, bought out troubled banks, offered incentives to produce electric vehicles, drastically lowered federal interest rates and created many jobs.

But In Zuptastan, the President met in Saxonwold and appointed Zupta-friendly Ministers, and then shuffled, and shuffled, and shuffled them every time a Minister disobeyed a directive from you-know-who!

In the EU, debt in Greece, Turkey, Spain and even Italy was restructured or written off, or stimulus packages were implemented to save or create jobs.

Here in Zuptastan, we, including the Labour Minister, did nothing about strike violence until 2016.

We collapsed electricity provision into rolling blackouts, forcing businesses like the aluminium smelter for COEGA to go elsewhere and rapidly raised electricity prices making companies uncompetitive.

We then also implemented a de facto ban on temporary employment services, all costing jobs during the global economic downturn.

In China, the government invested in one of its largest infrastructure rollouts to boost their economy, building houses and even whole cities. Now under the new Belt and Road project, China is revitalising its old silk trade routes to Europe and Africa to boost trade.

In January, a new train route was launched between Beijing and London, taking goods across the whole of Asia and Europe to boost trade.

Here in Zuptastan, we implemented a much hated e-toll system and failed to complete our two new coal-fired power stations with colossal cost over-runs and corrupt deals in coal, power, mining and the like.

In Kenya, 8000 Jobs were initially created, rising to 30 000 jobs, by the building of a new standard gauge railway line from Mombasa to Nairobi to change travel time from days to mere hours. In fact, this train line is now going to be extended to Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, with funding already approved and the Kenyan government indicated it will extend the line to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), creating the first Indian to Atlantic ocean rail route across central Africa.

Unfortunately, most residents of Zuptastan don’t realise that our President was appointed the head of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Presidential Infrastructure Champion Initiative or PICI, and that he is in charge of the Southern African rail and road infrastructure programmes.

To date, he has delivered on not a single new kilometre of road or rail in 5 years of heading this initiative, has not revitalised the rail route between Durban and Dar es Salaam as promised and must be ranked as the poorest performing head of state in charge of an infrastructure project of all the Champions in Africa!

No jobs have been created by this president, or by actions of the Labour Minister, during the global economic downturn.

In fact, the Zupta cabinet under President Zuma lost 900 000 jobs.

I know, Minister Oliphant, that you are quick to point out that creating jobs is not your mandate. But in fact, Minister, creating jobs is everyone’s mandate, especially cabinet members.

When you radically and without warning upped the minimum wage in Agriculture, even your friends in the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), the research unit at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), say that you cost South Africa thousands of jobs.

When you and the ANC amended labour laws to effectively ban Temporary Employment Services in SA, you cost SA jobs, and when your boss, the President of Zuptastan, shuffles the cabinet in the dead of night, it wrecks business confidence and leads to job losses.

You can deny and obfuscate all you like, but voters punished the ANC and the Zupta cabinet with the biggest drop in electoral support that has ever happened in our democracy, from 62% of the vote down to a measly 53%. Aren’t you embarrassed?

Now in this context, it is difficult to understand the Department of Labour and the two Ministers’ intentions to once again fail this coming year:

The first planned failure: The Department of Labour has reduced the target for the Public Employment Services to place people in jobs compared to last year. In 2016, they placed over 14 000 people in permanent employment. This year, the actual target has been reduced to only 8 000 people as a result of budget cuts. Ratings downgrades cause budget cuts.

So when the President says that the ratings downgrade is no problem, he clearly doesn’t care that the Department is actually planning to fail by placing 6000 fewer people in jobs than last year. This is entirely unthinkable!

The second planned failure: Productivity SA had their funding cut twice in the past financial year and the Minister is planning again to delay their funds!

Let’s remember that Productivity SA’s methods are the cheapest way of saving jobs in SA. Compared to the massive incentives to create jobs in the motor industry, Productivity SA requires a fraction of that money to save companies from liquidation or save jobs through improving productivity.

Every time the Labour Committee meets, we are given a different explanation for the cutting of the funds to Productivity SA. First, we were told that they didn’t apply for the funds. Then we were told that they didn’t follow the correct accounting procedures. Then we were simply told “there is something fishy with the finances of Productivity SA and we have appointed an external investigator”. Then we were told that the leadership resigned. Then the Minister said during question time that they were given their money, but in future they will only receive budgeted funds when projects are completed. Yet the strategic plan of Productivity SA tabled on 4 May 2017 says that they only received R95 million of the budgeted R191 million.

The third planned failure: The Minister says she is not going to study the potential impact of the National Minimum Wage on the textile sector or any other sector and not even consider any sectoral exemptions. So essentially, we are driving the economy into a dark tunnel, with no lights on our train and hoping that there won’t be a crash!

The fourth planned failure: The Department of Labour has reduced all target indicators across all entities that report to the Department to approximately one third of the indicators on which they had to report to Parliament last year.

Now you get what you measure.

If Parliament will only get reports of one third of the indicators, it means the transparency is gone. We simply won’t know in many cases where the problems are, because the target indicators will be concealed from Parliament.

After intervention from the Committee, the Director General has agreed to change some of this and ensure that the Committee has full reporting of the indicators as they did previously.

We hope.

However, Minister, you wouldn’t know this, because you never attend our Committee.

Having attended only two committee meetings in over seven years means that even you are not accountable, unless you are held accountable in Saxonwold, that is.

Imagine having the ignominious accolade of not having been fired by the Saxonwold mafia?

Here in Zuptastan, we don’t care about jobs, we don’t care about helping unemployed workers finding jobs, we are not concerned about infrastructure projects to create jobs and stimulate economic growth.

All we are concerned about is staying in the good books at the shebeen at 5 Saxonwold Drive!

Issued by the DA< 25 May 2017