South African President Thabo Mbeki says inappropriate rewards for top management were a concern in both the private and public sectors, but the government has no intention of intervening.
Replying to a question in the National Assembly on Wednesday from National Action MP Cassie Aucamp, the president said: “Government has neither the power nor the intention to intervene in this matter. One of the key interventions would be to ensure that corporate governance is sound as recommended in the successive King commissions.”
“Shareholders and other stakeholders must be vigilant and should work vigorously for the implementation of sound corporate governance systems.”
“The level of remuneration among high level private sector managers is currently being debated aggressively internationally. It is therefore not an exclusive South African challenge.”
Aucamp argued that there was an increasing trend of large scale worker dismissal by business institutions while huge profits were being made and the remuneration packages of the top structures ran “into astronomical amounts”.
Asked by African Christian Democratic Party MP Louis Green about the growth of a black middle class, he said: “It is a good thing, it must not be something that one needs to decry.”
He noted too that according to the Development Policy Research Unit at the University of Cape Town, the total number of jobs in the financial services sector grew from 582 897 employees in October 1995 to 1 023 373 by September 2002. – I-Net Bridge