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SA’s public servants (sic) were paid every month during the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown. They never missed a single salary or wage receipt while the world was stretched and broken and the rest of us struggled to keep afloat and pay wages.
Unlike millions of SA taxpayers and ratepayers who struggled, died, gave up and went to the wall, these employees received full salary, plus annual increases and all the usual perks and bonuses.
Now they want more. And when we look at the latest round of salary increases at the Johannesburg City Council trough, including an additional R80,000 a year for the mayor, who can blame them? A “part-time” councillor now gets nearly R600,000 a year, an executive committee councillor double that. Who even knows what a municipal speaker or committee chair gets these days?
The ANC created this monster, appointing hundreds of thousands more government employees and overseeing even more appointments in municipalities countrywide. Meanwhile government departments under failing ANC ministries crashed and burnt, provinces failed and municipalities went belly up while “services” shrank and disappeared.
Who is going to pay for it? Nobody in the ANC has ever stood up to them. Now Cyril “The Hollow Man” Ramaphosa will need Johnny “Ja, My Baas” Steenhuisen’s support to face them down — or simply pay up as usual so taxpayers have to cover it and get deeper into debt.
We already have far too many public servants in SA and most of them are underqualified and inefficient. Many are plain useless. It’s time to call them — and the government of national unity — out.
Mark Lowe Durban
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
LETTER: ANC created public servant monster
You reap what you sow, and it’s harvest time for the ANC and decision time for the DA. (“Public servants reject 4.7% wage increase”, November 22).
SA’s public servants (sic) were paid every month during the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown. They never missed a single salary or wage receipt while the world was stretched and broken and the rest of us struggled to keep afloat and pay wages.
Unlike millions of SA taxpayers and ratepayers who struggled, died, gave up and went to the wall, these employees received full salary, plus annual increases and all the usual perks and bonuses.
Now they want more. And when we look at the latest round of salary increases at the Johannesburg City Council trough, including an additional R80,000 a year for the mayor, who can blame them? A “part-time” councillor now gets nearly R600,000 a year, an executive committee councillor double that. Who even knows what a municipal speaker or committee chair gets these days?
The ANC created this monster, appointing hundreds of thousands more government employees and overseeing even more appointments in municipalities countrywide. Meanwhile government departments under failing ANC ministries crashed and burnt, provinces failed and municipalities went belly up while “services” shrank and disappeared.
Who is going to pay for it? Nobody in the ANC has ever stood up to them. Now Cyril “The Hollow Man” Ramaphosa will need Johnny “Ja, My Baas” Steenhuisen’s support to face them down — or simply pay up as usual so taxpayers have to cover it and get deeper into debt.
We already have far too many public servants in SA and most of them are underqualified and inefficient. Many are plain useless. It’s time to call them — and the government of national unity — out.
Mark Lowe
Durban
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
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