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The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes the slight reduction by 1% in the expanded unemployment to 43% over the past quarter with the creation of 204 000 new jobs.  This follows upon similar decreases in the unemployment rate over the previous two quarters and thus a combined 3% reduction in unemployment over the first 9 months of 2022.

Whilst this is positive news, no sober person can celebrate an unemployment rate of 43%.  It remains unacceptably and dangerously high.  What is needed now is to support this momentum.  More must be done to:

• Support Eskom, including slashing its debt burden so it can ramp up its maintenance programmes and invest in new generation capacity.  The economy cannot grow with constant loadshedding.
• Tackle cable theft crippling Eskom, Transnet, and Metrorail.  This is key to growing our mining, manufacturing and agricultural sectors and their jobs.
• Restore basic services in dysfunctional municipalities to stem the flight from rural towns.
• Intensify the fight against corruption and crime and ensure the accused are brought to trial.
• Allocate more resources to SARS to tackle tax evasion and customs fraud and thus bring in the badly needed revenue to provide quality public services.
• Extend the Presidential Employment Stimulus to accommodate 2 million unemployed persons.
• Enhance the SRD Grant to ensure the full 10 million targeted recipients receive their allocations, link it to the Food Poverty Line and its recipients to skills development and employment programmes.
• Reduce the 32% taxes on fuel to ease the burden of record high fuel prices on the commuters and the economy.
• Revive buy local campaigns to encourage all consumers, including the state and private sector, to support locally produced goods.
• Explore a more progressive tax regime to enable struggling SMMEs to grow.
• Expedite the Revenue Laws Amendment Bill to allow financially struggling workers limited access to their pension funds.

The Reserve Bank needs to give space to the economy and move away from its knee jerk tendency to burden workers and businesses with its 75 basis point hikes in the repo rate every month.  Equally government needs to assist by addressing the causes of the inflation spike, namely by reducing the excessive fuel taxes and taking on board two thirds of Eskom’s debt burden to lessen its need for double digit tariff hikes.

It is equally critical that the private sector play its role, the banking and financial sectors, the mining industry, and other large employers.  The private sector needs to show real solidarity with struggling sectors of the economy and ramp up its investments in local industries.

Issued by COSATU