MPS AGAINST TAX HIKE PROPOSAL

LOBAMBA – Finance Minister Neal Rijkenberg will need a miracle to be able to implement the proposed tax hike on electricity and fuel levy.

This is because one Member of Parliament after another yesterday minced no words when they informed the minister that his budget was offside and it was meant to make the people even poorer.
This was during the Budget Speech Debate in the House of Assembly where MPs spent about five hours finding loopholes in the minister’s speech.

First to take the floor was Nkilongo MP Timothy Myeni who wondered why pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) was being increased from 33 to 36 per cent. “You have, for a period of three years, not offered the civil servants any cost-of-living adjustment yet you are again calling for an increase in taxes,” said Myeni. 

The MP said Rijkenberg’s speech was surely not made for the ordinary people as they were not considered, especially by also planning to implement the 15 per cent tax hike in electricity.  On the same note, Siphofaneni MP Mduduzi Simelane said the hike in electricity and fuel levy would simply raise the cost of living for the people in the rural areas.

Simelane said if government increased the price of fuel by E1.20 per litre, then surely every other commodity would have to be increased because making bread or farming cabbages all needed fuel.
Mahlangatsha MP Musa Ngcobo also said the VAT on electricity was offside, including the proposed 36 per cent PAYE. “There are CEOs in the country’s parastatals who earn over E100 000 a month yet you expect that person to be taxed under the same tax bracket as someone who earns about E40 000,” submitted Ngcobo.

He made an example of how much petrol he used on his car and said the minister was really driving them to poverty.

complaints

Lugongolweni MP Enos Magongo said the Prime Minister (PM) Ambrose Dlamini, just last year announced that there would be no increase in water and electricity prices, but with the recent developments, it was clearly now a story of the past. He said there were already complaints about the 33 per cent tax before the minister proposed the three per cent increase.
Magongo added that another reason government lost a lot of money was because of the failure to prioritise projects which caused a number of white elephants in the country.

He made an example of the Lubombo Referral Hospital, which he said operated merely as a clinic and, instead patients, were referred to Good Shepherd Hospital.
The MP said the hospital was not completed yet it also had expensive equipment and wondered why a new referral hospital which will be in Elangeni was being budgeted for when government failed to complete other similar structures. 
Maphalaleni MP Mabulala Maseko said it was not the right time to raise taxes and increase fuel levy.

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