DUMA GQUBULE: The public sector needs to employ more people, not fewer
Austerity is one of the likely reasons for service delivery failure and collapsing infrastructure
I have always suspected that underspending by government departments does not have a large macroeconomic effect and is unlikely to be a major reason for service delivery failures, but I never had the data to back up my views. Eliminating underspending was unlikely to suddenly result in better delivery of services in an emaciated public service that had 164,661 vacancies at the end of 2021. It was more likely that a decade of austerity was one of the reasons for underspending, the failure to deliver quality public services and collapsing public infrastructure.
In 2023 the parliamentary budget office published the most comprehensive analysis that has ever been done on underspending by national government departments, covering 2011/12 to 2020/21 and concluding that the Treasury must “stop weaponising underspending to justify austerity”. The paper says: “Overall, our analysis does not show significant levels of underspending. The reasons for the underspending that exists highlig...
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