The luxury vehicles many members of President Jacob Zuma’s new Cabinet have acquired over the past six months are but ”tools to do work”, Public Service and Administration Minister Richard Baloyi said on Wednesday.
Briefing the media at Parliament, he said ministers had to be ”highly mobile” to carry out their duties.
”They have to travel from one place to another, doing work … There has to be a conducive environment in order for them to do their work.
”It [is] the responsibility of government to provide the necessary minimum resources that are required for ministers to do their work,” Baloyi said.
Referring to the Ministerial Handbook — the document stipulates departments may spend up to ”70% of the inclusive annual remuneration package of a minister” on official vehicles — he said all ministers who had acquired new vehicles had stayed within its guidelines.
Over the past six months, Cabinet members have spent, in total, tens of millions of rands on luxury vehicles, many fitted with expensive accessories, for official use in both Cape Town and Pretoria.
”It’s within the prescription [of the Ministerial Handbook],” Baloyi said.
Asked if he thought it was moral and ethical for ministers to be driving around in luxury vehicles while many South Africans were going hungry, he responded: ”This is a tool to do work. A tool to do work must be assessed in terms of the environment where this worker is supposed to do work.”
Asked if it bothered him, Baloyi — who is a member of the ministerial team appointed to effect savings in government spending, a brief that includes a review of the handbook — replied: ”Yes, yes, it does bother. That is why we are saying we are considering options.”
Asked when the review would be completed, he did not give a date.
”We are working on that. It will have to be soon we finalise the review process.”
On whether options being examined by the team included a ”tightening” of the handbook’s prescriptions on ministerial official vehicles, he agreed this was under discussion.
”[But] I don’t want to pre-empt the final outcome of the review,” he said.
Earlier, Baloyi told journalists he had been tasked by Cabinet to deal with all future issues relating to government vehicles. — Sapa