Workers at the state-owned freight utility have been striking since last week, demanding wage increases of between 12% and 13.5%.
JOHANNESBURG - There are concerns that the current Transnet strike is throttling the country’s economy to the point of no return.Business Leadership South Africa CEO Busisiwe Mavuso said that they were worried that this could be the final nail in the coffin for an already limping economy.
"It is the most appalling act of economic sabotage we are seeing. It is throttling our economy to the point of no return. It’s going to have a dire impact on our fragile economy." Mavuso said that the economy had already been dealt a blow by COVID-19, the July unrest, load shedding and the KwaZulu-Natal floods earlier this year and she said that the Transnet strike was going to cost the country billions and set us back in our efforts to try and recover.
"All of this against the backdrop of low growth, high unemployment and rising living costs - we are really doing an injustice to ordinary South Africans. So, if we thought we were going to be able to arrest the 43% unemployment in terms of the expanded definition, I think that that just pushes us away further from that target."
She said that the country’s investment appeal was weakening by the day and that this affirmed that we could not provide the basics that investors needed to operate.
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