SAA survives — so do pit toilets
Funds for failing airline diverted from social programmes
The R10.5bn being spent to save SA Airways will be diverted from funds initially earmarked for pressing needs such as libraries and laboratories for schools, better health-care facilities, housing, farm support and eradicating pit toilets.
Social pressure groups are fuming over the diversion of funds, but the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) — which represents airline staff — accused finance minister Tito Mboweni of “mischievously and recklessly” misleading the public about where the money is coming from.
Mboweni unveiled the spending plan in his medium-term budget policy statement on Wednesday, when he tabled several bills, including the division of revenue second amendment bill.
An explanatory memorandum describes how provincial and local government allocations will be adjusted to make money available for the SAA business rescue process, which includes severance packages for retrenched employees of the national carrier.
The documents spell out cuts totalling R1.3bn in provincial conditional grants, including: R336m from the school infrastructure backlogs grant; R273m from the provincial emergency housing grant; R240m from the national health insurance indirect grant; R224m from the HIV, TB, malaria and community outreach grant; R52m from the health facility revitalisation grant; R14m from the community libraries services grant; and R14m from the comprehensive agricultural support programme grant.
The Treasury has also cut R613mfromlocal government conditional grants. These include transport network grants and grants that are critical formaintaining water infrastructure.
Julia Chaskalson, spokesperson for the public-interest law centre Section27, said the reductions to school infrastructure grants were particularly devastating given the serious backlogs her organisation and others such as Equal Education have found, especially at rural schools.
She said that when Mboweni announced a R2bn reduction in the education infrastructure grant in his supplementary budget in June, redirecting that money towards Covid relief efforts, 1,390 school infrastructure projects had to be scrapped or delayed.
These included eradicating pit toilets at 4,000 schools, building more classrooms to deal with overcrowding, and the provision of libraries and laboratories at schools that still
do not have such facilities.
Chaskalson said: “We are saying there are other alternative ways to raise revenue without risking or jeopardising human rights.”
Section27 and other organisations under the Budget Justice Coalition will start lobbying parliament from tomorrow to get the spending cuts reversed in the main budget in February next year.
“Government has to carefully consider cutbacks on education and basic nutrition.
These are unqualified rights, you can’t use lack of planning as an excuse to deny the fulfilment of those rights,” Chaskalson said.
Phakamile Hlubi-Majola, spokesperson for Numsa, accused Mboweni of falsely creating the impression that the SAA rescue was being funded at the expense of social spending priorities.
“That he has mischievously and deliberately couched the presentation of the budget to mislead the public and create the impression that other departments had to be sacrificed to save SAA is actually very disingenuous, very reckless, very irresponsible and nothing more than an attempt to divide the working class and mislead the public,” Hlubi-Majola said.
She said SAA employees had borne the brunt of the airline’s financial crisis.
“This R10.5bn has come at great cost. For the last five months, workers at SAA have been without any kind of salary while the business rescue practitioners have been earning very generous packages.
“Second, 2,000 workers have had to be retrenched in order for this airline to be restructured,” Hlubi-Majola said.
SACP spokesperson Alex Mashilo said the party supported efforts to rescue and restructure SAA, but it was opposed to a budget premised on austerity.
“These reductions from one grant to another, from one function to another, revolve around austerity. We have very strong views against austerity because it will impact negatively on growth,” he said.
National Treasury director-general Dondo Mogajane said the funding of SAA was a cabinet decision.
“The cabinet obviously would have applied its mind in weighing the options, also in terms of deciding where the money must come from,” he said.
“When that decision is made, it’s neither here nor there for me to say if it’s justified or not. All those expenditure items are critical.”
[It is] an attempt to divide the working class and mislead the public