CoLA should be equivalent to inflation

LOBAMBA – The three per cent cost-of-living adjustment (CoLA) announced by government through the Ministry of Finance for the 2023/24 financial year is not cutting it for some MPs.

Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg, in the recently presented budget speech for the next financial year, stated that they had budgeted for three per cent CoLA but fully understanding that the salary review exercise should take place and could affect this percentage.

Timphisini MP Nelson Mamba said CoLA should be equivalent to the inflation, which currently stands at 5.7 per cent. This was during the Ministry of Public Service Portfolio Committee budget debate at the House of Assembly yesterday.

“If government was not making the CoLA equivalent to the inflation, then it means it was not considerate of the high costs of commodities which its employees are exposed to,” he said.

The same issue of the CoLA saw some MPs encouraging the Public Service Minister, Mabulala Maseko to see to it that junior police officers’ implementation of Phase II was implemented to the satisfaction of the officers to avoid division among the senior officers, whose implementation of the Phase II was allegedly informed by SADC standards, and the junior officers. However, Maseko disputed that the Phase II implementation for the senior officers was informed by the SADC standards but what they did was adopt the SADC police officers’ titles to align with them.

He stated that the ministry’s consultants had confirmed that a salary review would be held and the junior officers would have a chance in that platform to make submissions on this issue.