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Cape Town - Ministers should be given a target to create jobs and those who don't should be fired, said Cosatu’s parliamentary representative Matthew Parks.
He was speaking to Fin24 in a studio interview following the budget speech from Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.
Parks said the federation expected a radical budget. "It was quite disappointing," he said, adding that Cosatu wanted job creation to be at the heart of the budget speech.
"We wanted specific targets of how many jobs would be created by each department, province, municipality ... but there was nothing mentioned."
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Cosatu would have liked to see a macro-economi plan from the government on how to create, for instance, 100 000 jobs per month for the next five years, he explained.
Parks said the job creation projects that many government departments have participated in has been through the public works programmes. "But that is paying people about R75 per day for low-skilled jobs like cleaning the streets."
He said government must treat the high unemployment rate as a national crisis. "Cosatu would have liked to see a very clear job creation programme. Every minister should be given a target to create jobs - and if they don't meet it they should be fired."
The same should apply to provinces and municipalities, Parks said.
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