State pushing neoliberal policies

FINANCE minister Mthuli Ncube presented the 2022 national budget on November 25, 2021. The budget, which was fashioned as being pro-poor, is nothing close to that, but rather shows government’s commitment to neoliberal policies.

The budget clearly indicates increases in taxation that will have a negative impact on the poor such as the proposed increase in withholding tax, from 10% to 30%, the introduction of an additional 2% on fuel and the US$50 tax on imported handsets.

The latter goes against the spirit of minimising the digital divide in this era of COVID-19, where the nation should be seen trying to enhance digital literacy among the disadvantaged classes of society, particularly with the introduction of online classes for school children and virtual marketplaces for the informal traders.

Social protection is a key tenet of any society and the expectation was that there would be meaningful scientific allocation towards this in line with SDG 8 that stipulates the provision of decent work and social protection provision as part of formalisation of the informal economy.

At $10 billion, the proposed allocation for the Public Service, Labor and Social Welfare ministry falls way short of the many competing interests for the Ministry in so far as social protection is concerned.

Viset is of the view that as with the Abuja Declaration on health, there is need for a specific allocation of GDP that must be allocated towards social protection, or as in other countries, we must allocate a percentage of revenues from a key economic activity such as mining, which will then go towards a national fund.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the nation’s disaster preparedness falls woefully short of expectation in so far as providing cover to the many economically active citizenry plying their trade in the informal sector who were left exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

While we acknowledge the increase in the allocation to the Health and Child Welfare ministry, we remain concerned with how the wage bill will be funded, as health personnel are constantly up in arms with the fact that their salaries are eroded by inflation on a daily basis.

Young people were estimated to be 67% of the population in 2018 and greater consideration needs to be given to their needs, particularly given the fact that many of them are graduating from colleges and universities to join the jobless market or try to eke a living in the already populated informal sector. Viset