By Staff Reporter
The Democratic Alliance recently launched its elections manifesto in the Eastern Cape pledging to “urgently rescue this province from the spiralling crisis of hunger, poverty and the exploding cost of living, before it is too late”.
“That is why the DA is here to launch our manifesto to rescue the Eastern Cape,” said party leader John Steenhuisen.
With less than two months left until the national and provincial elections on 29 May, the country is abuzz with political party heavyweights zigzagging the length and breadth of the country trying to woo voters.
The DA says it has big plans, not only for the country, but for the Eastern Cape, if voted into power.
Steenhuisen said: “Like any crisis response, the DA’s rescue plan addresses both acute, urgent needs, as well as the systemic changes we need to get the Eastern Cape back on track.”
He said immediately after the election on 29 May, a DA government would implement the recommendation by the Human Rights Commission to declare hunger in the Eastern Cape as a disaster in terms of the Disaster Management Act.
“This would free up the resources we need in the immediate, to get more food into the bellies of hungry children and families.”
Steenhuisen said the DA’s rescue plan also includes increasing the child support grant to the food poverty line, to R760 per month.
This would immediately put an extra R250 into the hands of caregivers to be able to afford enough food for their children.
“But our immediate response to this crisis will go further still. The DA will also make food cheaper.”
The DA is the only party with a plan to directly tackle the cost of living crisis by making food more affordable, Steenhuisen told supporters.
“Our rescue plan will achieve this by expanding the number of food items that are exempt from Value-Added Tax. This will immediately lead to a 15% reduction in the cost of essential items, including baby food, beans and chicken.
“In this election, a vote for the DA is a vote to put food back on your family’s table.”
But the party’s rescue plan does not only focus on urgent and immediate solutions, said Steenhuisen.
“A DA government will also tackle the root causes of the poverty crisis in the Eastern Cape. There is a reason why hunger and hardship is highest in this province.” He says it is because the Eastern Cape has the highest unemployment rate in the whole of South Africa.
“Our country as a whole already has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. But, in the Eastern Cape, unemployment is the worst of the worst.”
The DA says nearly 42% of working-age people in the province cannot find work and the figure rises to 47% if one includes the number of people who have given up on ever finding a job. Out of every 100 young people looking for work in this province, over 70 will never find a job if things remain as they are.
“But things cannot remain as they are,” Steenhuisen declared.
With a new government anchored by the DA, he said they would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the province.
If voted into power, the party also promises to make the following changes:
- Invest money in infrastructure to ignite job creation.
- Give young people a head start in the job market through Youth Employment Opportunity Certificate.
- Create conditions for businesses to thrive and create jobs.
- Rescue plan to bring an end to excruciating suffering of children, gogos and parents.
- Ensure no child ever goes to bed hungry again.
- End loadshedding and water-shedding.
- Increase investment in infrastructure repair and maintenance.
- Roll out in EC same loadshedding reducing solutions as in places like Cape Town.
- Make it possible for private homes and businesses to sell their excess electricity back to the grid.
- Fight violent crime in the province like never before.
- Bring an end to gang crime that terrorises communities by employing latest technology.
- Abolish cadre deployment corruption once and for all.
- Appoint competent police officers and competent officials at all levels of government.
Steenhuisen stated emphatically: “The DA has a credible and costed plan to rescue the Eastern Cape from the hardship its people endure on a daily basis. Unlike other parties, our plan is not plucked out of thin air.
“It is based on our decades of experience in government in places like Kouga, like Midvaal, and like the Western Cape. The DA knows what we’re talking about when it comes to fixing what the ANC has broken.”
“That is our pledge to the people of the Eastern Cape.”
