Political analyst Dr Dale McKinley says the government’s decision to give members of the Executive free electricity and water is a recipe for social unrest.
Civil organisations and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) have strongly criticised the government for giving ministers and deputy ministers more benefits.
#COSATU demands the scrapping of the vulgar and tone-deaf perks for cabinet members @ParliamentofRSA @PresidencyZA @CyrilRamaphosa @samkelemaseko @SABCNews @mzwaimbeje pic.twitter.com/4iYvvR7SFv
— @COSATU Today (@_cosatu) October 10, 2022
According to the previous Ministerial Handbook, the amount of taxpayers’ money that went to paying for water and electricity at official ministerial residences was capped at R5000 per month per house. However, the latest version of the Ministerial Handbook, shows that the cap has been removed.
McKinley says those who benefit at the expense of taxpayers have no idea what ordinary South Africans are going through as the cost of living skyrockets.
He says, ” Do they have any sense of what people are going through, any kind of empathy, any kind of sense of that, or are they just living in a bubble at such a level, that they can’t see what everyone else is doing? And they don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. That is, I think, what is really, really making people angry. When we ask them, like wait a minute, don’t you feel bad about this, they say no, we don’t, it’s ok for us. And I think that abusing taxpayers’ money for self-interest, is really, really outrageous.”
