The Western Cape government has said that the bailout of SAA, which it claims come at the expense of healthcare and elderly people, is difficult to understand.
David Maynier, the provincial finance minister, said this week that the province’s budget had been cut by nearly R100 million, in order to finance the R10.5 billion bailout for SAA.
According to BusinessLive the items that had their budget cut in the province included ‘30m in the national tertiary services grant, critical in maintaining and developing health services, and R23.3m in the title deeds restoration grant’.
Speaking on the growing debt crisis Maynier said: ‘To illustrate the scale of the problem, consider the fact that national government will be spending R353.1bn on debt-service costs in 2023/2024, which is R125.8bn more than national government will spend on social protection in this financial year in South Africa.’ He said this made the SAA bailout ‘hard to understand’ and it was ‘simply wrong’.
Deputy President, David Mabuza, also said this week in Parliament that South Africa ‘needed’ an airline and a well-run SAA would ‘boost’ the country.