COSATU wants salary increases for lower income public servants

Labour Federation, COSATU, has reiterated its stance that hard working public servants should receive salary increases – rather than high-ranking government officials who are already provided with several state benefits.

This follows a government-gazetted report, stating that elected officials should receive a three-percent salary increase. The report, from the Independent Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers, has cited potential salary increases for President Cyril Ramaphosa, MPs, ministers, judges and other officials for the financial year ahead.

COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator, Mathew Parks says “We are not blind to the pressure facing the fiscus. So if government is struggling to supply funds and salary increases to public servants, whatever money it does have it must be geared to those in need. It must be geared towards nurses who earn R180000, or to police officer who earn less than R200000 a year. It should not go to those in the Cabinet who get 1.4ml and get free government housing and get free transport and many other benefits. It should not go to judges who earn above 1.5ml.”

Parks laments the rising living costs faced by workers “Petrol price hikes are huge, but here are people earning 2.5ml who have a government car and the department pays for the petrol, they don’t feel it and they have no idea what petrol is. But an ordinary nurse who is taking 8000 cash, she must first pay her debts, she feels it and she is struggling. Most workers spend a quarter of their salaries on transport, and that was before this huge fuel crisis this year. Most workers, including public servants, are highly indebted and many are struggling and they are even lucky to have jobs but they have to support people who have lost their jobs.”

Earlier, Cosatu’s general secretary, Bheki Ntshalintshali shared the same sentiments saying public servants deserve an increase.

“They seem not to be listening to what is happening around them. The economy is bad, there is the mismanagement of funds, there are people who are supposed to be looking after the funds who are not doing their jobs, most of them.”

“The people who deserve to be getting an increase are the public servants, the lowly paid. They have agreed that there should be a wage freeze for three years but all of a sudden the Commission says those people deserve an increase,” adds Ntshalintshali.