The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes Public Service and Administration Minister, Senzo Mchunu’s, willingness to revisit and improve the reviewed Ministerial Handbook. This follows years of sustained pressure by the DA in pushing for curbed luxuries for politicians as contained in the ‘confidential’ guide.
Yesterday, in Parliament, Minister Mchunu agreed to the DA’s proposal for the Department of Public Service and Administration to come and account for the flawed reviewed Ministerial Handbook and to incorporate recommendations from Committee members on how to improve the handbook by reducing cabinet benefits and expenditure.
The DA will write to the Chairperson of the Committee on Public Service and Administration, James Tyotyo, to request that the department appears before the committee as a matter of priority in order to account for the flawed process in reviewing the Ministerial Handbook. The fact that the formulation of the handbook was done without consulting Parliament, is a smack in the face of the public and political parties’ Constitutional mandate to perform oversight over the Executive.
The revision of the Ministerial Handbook was long awaited, and there were high hopes that the revised handbook would reduce wasteful and unnecessary luxury expenditure. However, the ‘revised’ handbook was deeply disappointing. In fact, it now allows for even more public money to be splashed on and squandered by members of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Executive.
Drastic amendments are required to put a stop to such excessive spending of the people’s money by the Executive. It cannot be that ministers are living the high life while millions of South Africans struggle to put food on the table. By simply trimming the fat, government could redirect millions to job creation initiatives, health, education, keeping our communities safe, and ultimately building a prosperous society.
The DA will be proposing measures to contain expenditure, and to reduce unnecessary privileges, like those introduced by the Western Cape Government more than ten years ago. South Africa cannot afford public money to be spent on the luxury lives of the executives while millions of South African struggles under the ailing economy and are trapped by poverty and unemployment. Public money must be used to create prosperity for the people, not to buy Porsches for politicians.