OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 11.30am.
PUBLIC Enterprises Minister Jeff Radebe said on Tuesday that the restructuring of state assets is on track — but the country’s communist party warned it will protest against job losses stemming from the process.
”I am…more than confident that the business plan approach we are proposing will conclude the initial business of restructuring by 2004,” Radebe told a privatisation conference in Johannesburg.
The privatisation programme centres on the restructuring and partial sell-off of the nation’s four big parastatals: defence group Denel, telecoms monopoly Telkom, power utility Eskom and transport group Transnet.
The government proposes to raise R40-billion over the next four years from the revamp, which is central to the government’s plan to deliver better basic services to millions of poor blacks who have been discriminated against under the former apartheid system.
”When necessary, legislation for different sectors and/or entities will be in place, the critically important areas of regulation and competent authorities will be operative and the balance between social needs in a developing society will be balanced with the best economic practice appropriate to such development,” Radebe said.
He was addressing international bankers, government officials and representatives of privatisation agencies from across Africa gathered in Johannesburg for the three-day conference.
But a spokesman for the South African Communist Party said it would demonstrate at the conference on Thursday, to express its dissatisfaction with the looming job losses from state restructurings.
”We will picket to say that South Africa is not for sale and to defend jobs in the public sector,” Mazibuko Jara said.
Concerns about deep job cuts in a country where a third of the economically active population is already unemployed has created strain between the SACP and its alliance partner, the ANC. — Reuters