As South Africans struggle to make ends meet and the country continues to suffer from deliberate power cuts, there has been outrage over the free electricity and water benefits for government ministers’ official residences.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) said it wants a review of how amendments are made to the Ministerial Handbook, arguing it is an illegal, flawed process.
Perks
The handbook which details perks for minister and their deputies can be changed by President Cyril Ramaphosa without consulting anyone.
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Ramaphosa made the revision in April, the same month that South Africans had their electricity tariffs increased.
Ministers are exempt from paying for rates despite earning R2.4 million a year, and deputy ministers being paid R2 million a year, City Press reported.
The revision to the ministerial handbook states that the Department of Public Works will now pay for the water and electricity at state-owned residences.
The president also increased his cabinet members’ spending limit for luxury cars, and supplied their official residences with generators, as the rest of the country feel the excruciating pain of load shedding every month in 2022 accept January, according to Load Shedding Tracker by Outlier.
Lack of transparency
DA Shadow Minister of Public Service and Administration Leon Schreiber said the lack of transparency is giving rise to the outrage.
“It appears Cyril Ramaphosa hid from the public amendments he made to the Ministerial Handbook that force taxpayers to pay water and electricity bills of Cabinet cadres.
“The DA nonetheless exposed this deceit, and we ask the public to support our efforts to reverse this sick perk.”
Kicking South Africans while they’re down
Considering the loss to South Africans’ reliable access to electricity, and large parts of Gauteng losing reliable access to water, Schreiber said the idea that taxpayers should be paying for tariff bills for ministers is “really quite a slap in the face”.
Schreiber added that he only managed to “track down” the perks during a Parliamentary meeting.
“I suspect unfortunately that this was a deliberate effort not inform the public about these very substantial and significant changes.”
Schreiber said the amendments to the ministerial handbook “kick South Africans while they are down”
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