Numsa Set for Indefinite Strike, Climate Finance Deal Could Save SA Treasury Billions

LOCAL NEWS

• Union Numsa set for 'indefinite' strike next week with wage negotiations deadlocked. Numsa wants a salary hike of 8% for 2021 and CPI+2% increase for two years after vs an offering of 4.4% for 2021, CPI+0.5% for 2022, and CPI+1% for 2023.
  • Numsa says employers were insulting workers, having frozen salaries in 2020 while still earning profits in the business.
  • Companies have said they have to balance the uncertainty that persists in the market. Numsa plans to start the strike on Tuesday, 5 Oct.
• Think-tank Meridian Economics says SA's Treasury could save billions on the country's interest bill and create the fiscal space to solve Eskom's debt problem if it brokers a climate finance deal with international funders in exchange for an accelerated retirement of coal-powered power stations at the upcoming meetings with the US, US, France & Germany
• Ramaphosa authorised the release of the SIU report into the Digital Vibes scandal regarding the irregular awarding of R150m in contracts.
  • The contracts were found to be fruitless and wasteful expenditure by the SIU, and that close associates of former Health minister Zweli Mkhize had engaged in fraudulent activity. Mkhize himself has also been implicated in the report as, at best, being 'improper' and, at worst, being engaged in unlawful activity – Statement