State’s wage bill choking funds for poor, says MEC
Public sector costs decried as Western Cape budget targets growth, education, employment and the youth
The public sector wage bill is unsustainable and is crowding out other much-needed expenditure programmes aimed at the poor, says Western Cape finance MEC Ivan Meyer. Tabling the province’s 2017 budget in the provincial legislature on Tuesday, Meyer warned that the increasing public sector wage bill would make it difficult for the province to meet some of its objectives. Public sector employee costs make up 36% of the national budget. According to recent figures by Statistics SA, government spending on employee compensation increased by more than R40bn from R473bn in the 2013-14 financial year to R514bn in 2014-15. The report showed that the R40bn increase was largely due to a rise in the wage bill of provincial governments‚ which shot up by R18bn. Speaking ahead of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s budget speech in Parliament last month, Treasury director-general Lungisa Fuzile said the government was considering offering voluntary severance packages to further reduce its 1.32-mill...
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