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Opposition parties react to Ramaphosa’s economic recovery plan

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Opposition political parties say there is not much that is new in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s economic recovery plan announced in Parliament on Thursday.

Parties say he has expanded the same programmes he announced in his State of the Nation Address earlier this year.

They have also questioned whether there is any capacity and willingness to implement the commitment.

“I’m afraid the President gets zero benefit of the doubt anymore on implementation. There’s a growing credibility gap between what he says and what is being implemented and that is what is concerning us the most. We don’t need more plans in South Africa. We don’t need more commitments to reform. We’ve had that for two and a half years. Now what we need is action and what I would have liked to have seen the President say today is, “We will do the following reforms by this date and a public commitment and if we don’t get that done by that date, then the ministers responsible will be held accountable. They will be removed from the cabinet”, says the DA’s Geordin Hill.

The UDM was equally critical of the President’s plan, citing previous commitments of job creation that never came to fruition.

“Even if you were to look at the previous administration when he was Deputy President, the number of job commitments, job opportunity commitments were made but none of those were achieved. The problem with the ANC government is it’s easy for them to actually throw figures around and give themselves commitment rather commit themselves to figures. But later on they don’t account to say how many of those jobs they’ve managed to create. Ours then as the as the assembly and Parliament is to ensure that we keep track, we keep them in check and ensure that whatever commitments and promises they’ve made they are held to accountable for,” says the UDM’s Nqabayomzi Kwankwa.

 

The ACDP says that government’s implementation is being largely tainted by corruption.

“From SONAto date, we have not seen the implementation and this is largely as a result of corruption. It is largely as a result of an inept government largely as a result of the challenges of a government that is not as efficient as it ought to be.  We have been very vocal in terms of the fact that we do need to see beneficiation taking place. We do need to see localisation taking place. We do need to see our young people in particular being upskilled,” says the ACDP’s Waine Thring .

Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Groenewald says the President has too many hurdles that will make it difficult for him to succeed.

“It is quite clear, as far as the Freedom Front Plus is concerned that the President is a prisoner of NEDLAC on the one side and also a prisoner of the social economic ideology of the ANC. He cannot create the jobs we need. He’s going to create 800 000 jobs. What about the 2,2 million jobs at this moment we know about that has been lost and it’s going to be more when we get the new reports for the new quarters of the of the term. ”

The AIC, on the other hand, was pleased with the plan but cautioned that if corruption is not stemmed, the plan cannot succeed.

“It is a good plan but without stemming out corruption it cannot succeed. The President says he is going to focus on corruption to ensure  that corruption is done away with. People have become so corrupt that it cannot be controlled, but I was happy now when he mentioned that the SIU should be given time to do its job and there should be no political interference,” says AIC President, Lulama Ntshayisa .

The IFP also cited corruption as the issue with implementation.

” The problem of South Africa is not the lack of plans but corruption that we are not dealing decisively with. But we are happy that the President spoke about making sure that the law enforcement agencies will be assisted in with the monies given to them so that they do their work. We hope that what we’ve just seen recently where people are alleged  to have committed corruption are dealt with. Then we would have hoped that all these plans will actually come to something,” says IFP Deputy President Elphas Buthelezi.

Ramaphosa presents SA’s Economic Recovery Plan:

 

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