NEHAWU statement on the supplementary budget
25 June 2020
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] notes the Supplementary Budget presented by the Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni, in terms of the Public Finance Management Act, the Money Bills and Related Matters Act.
The tabling of this Supplementary Budget takes place against the background of the release of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey on the 23rd June 2020 by Statistics South Africa. Accordingly, total unemployment rate [the so-called expanded unemployment] was already almost 40% by the first quarter of 2020. This signifies the already unfolding catastrophic socioeconomic crises facing poor households in our population, 10.8 million of which were already unemployed before the implementation of the lockdown measures according to the declaration of the National State of Disaster in response to the Coronavirus epidemic since the second quarter.
As NEHAWU, whilst taking into account the broader fiscal response to the immediate crisis of COVID-19, we are nonetheless disappointed in the fact that this Supplementary Budget largely comprises reallocations across spheres and programmes, in which only about R38 billion is new and additional money. This is despite the fact that we are facing a disastrous over 7% GDP contraction in the current financial year and the fact that other peer countries are taking far more decisive macroeconomic measures to avert economic collapse.
There have been a range of measures proposed by our federation to stimulate economic growth, which have been ignored in the Supplementary Budget. Amongst others, these include the question of the prescribed assets to secure impact investments from the more than 6 trillion rands in pension savings and the implementation of the Government Employees Housing Scheme to stimulate the labour intensive construction sector and to address our members’ pressing demands.