EDITORIAL: Without the numbers, a government can’t know where to direct resources. It can’t plan. A country will crash. Yet the government has willingly managed to throttle one of the country’s most crucial and most effective national entities – Stats SA
A country is no different. Without the numbers, a government can’t know where to direct resources.Yet the government has willingly managed to throttle one of the country’s most crucial and most effective national entities – Stats SA.Funding of R160 million has been slashed. Posts have been frozen; 20% of positions are vacant.We are all for cost-cutting but it is important to cut costs in the right places.
These are professionals who do not receive a salary, whose reputations are on the line, who hold the Statistician-General to account and ensure that the standards remain high. This is not a state capture bailout. As professor David Everatt, the council’s chairperson, highlighted this week, Stats SA receives regular clean audits.
“It is very difficult to understand why a respected, reliable and important institution that plays by the rules and is praised by the Auditor-General is, in effect, punished by the government while those deeply implicated in state capture receive bailouts of massive proportions.”It was brought to the attention of Parliament years back, in the tenure of Statistician-General Pali Lehohla.Urgent action needs to be taken.
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