Dear Editor
The DA is calling on the ANC government to prioritise helping vulnerable South Africans, instead of spending more than R2.6 million to keep the lights burning at Ministers’ houses.
According to City Press, Minister Patricia de Lille’s Department of Public Works spent R1.3 million last year to install generators at Ministers’ houses in 2021, and another R681 000 this year. The cost of running these generators have risen dramatically from R31 750 last year to R621 000 in the first half of 2022 alone.
While hospitals, businesses and ordinary South African households have to struggle in the dark, the same fate does not befall the Ministers responsible for this catastrophe.
Had the ANC government truly cared about poor and vulnerable South Africans, they would have prioritised this money to ensure that all hospitals and clinics had power during rolling blackouts, that crime hotspots were not without lights when loadshedding struck, and that small businesses – critical to a recovering economy – could keep operating in the dark.
Minister De Lille must utilise taxpayers’ money to support the poor and vulnerable, not abuse it to ensure her and her fellow fat-cat Ministers’ comfort. ANC Ministers are paid enormous salaries, and while they refuse to solve the country’s power disaster, they should at the very least pay for their own generators and fuel.
Government must remember that it serves at the behest of the people. The people are not meant to serve them.
Regards
Samantha Graham-Maré MP
DA Shadow Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure
