Johannesburg - The government has misled South Africans
about how much of the national budget is spent on the salaries of civil
servants, Prophet Analytics claimed on Wednesday.
"The government is wrong when it states that only 35%
of the annual budget is spent on wages. The true figure is 88%...,"
analyst Peter Aling said in a statement.
The government had also misled analysts by appearing to
agree to 5.4% wage increases for civil servants, he said.
This was according to Prophet Analytics' fourth quarter 2012
Labour Market Navigator Report.
The report indicated an increase in the salaries earned by
black civil servants and the proportion of black government employees.
In the past 10 years, the percentage of black civil servants
had increased from 42 to 74, and nearly 40% of South Africa's highest-earning
blacks were now government employees.
Aling attributed sharp rises in black civil servants'
salaries to "managerial bloat", claiming the government used
promotion and job re-grading to increase their incomes.
"This results in the average remuneration for public
sector workers now (being) 32% higher than that of private sector
workers."
If historical rates of progression were maintained, 5.1
million black people would be earning more than the average white person in
private business by 2020, he said.
Racial income disparities were steadily, if slowly, closing.
"This is apparent from current census results showing
that black incomes grew 10.4% per annum between the censuses, compared to the
6.5% growth in white incomes," Aling said.
Measures to speed up this process included improving the
education system and reviewing labour laws, he said.
The National Treasury could not immediately be reached for comment.