R11bn early retirement plan in the 2024\/25 budget<\/a> to reduce the public sector wage bill. <\/p>\nCost-saving measure<\/p>\n
Targeting 30,000 employees aged 55-59, it allows for retirement without reduced benefits. The initiative aims to save the fiscus R2bn, though unions have warned of skills losses, especially in the health and education sectors. <\/p>\n
The programme for eligible employees was also introduced by the Treasury in October 2025 to rejuvenate the public service, manage the public service wage bill and enable the restructuring of departments to improve service delivery. <\/p>\n
The proposed additional allocations to provinces are: the Eastern Cape, R367m; the Free State, R217.4m; Gauteng, R359.6m; KwaZulu-Natal, R143.4m; Limpopo, R200m; Mpumalanga, R84m, the Northern Cape, R97m, the North West, R38m and the Western Cape, R251m. <\/p>\n
In its Budget Review the Treasury said 7,687 applications from eligible employees were approved in the first phase. Of those, 4,644 related to provincial departments and the rest to national departments. <\/p>\n
The total cost of the early retirements, the review says, amounts to R3.7bn and an estimated R5.5bn net savings, of which R2.9bn will be realised in 2026\/27, R1.4bn in 2027\/28 and R1.5bn in 2028\/29. <\/p>\n
\u2018High vacancy rate\u2019<\/p>\n
Lwazi Nkolonzi, spokesperson of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu), said the union \u2014 which represents about 270,000 of the public service\u2019s 1.3-million employees \u2014 \u201chas never supported this proposal by the state, precisely because of the high vacancy rate in the public service … if you take out the 30,000 [people] that the government is proposing, what does it mean for public service delivery?\u201d <\/p>\n
Nkolonzi said the union wasn\u2019t sure how many members had opted for early retirement, \u201cbut we have not seen a major drop in our membership over this period. However, we know that the government did not get the 30,000 they wanted\u201d. <\/p>\n
Basil Manuel, executive director of the National Professional Teachers Organisation of SA (Naptosa) said it is difficult to say how many members have opted for early retirement. \u201cWe hope it [the initiative] will save the money it\u2019s intended to save, but it\u2019s a wait and see.\u201d<\/p>\n
South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said the union was opposed to the early retirement plan. \u201cIt forms part of the broader austerity programme aimed at reducing the public sector wage bill rather than strengthening the capacity of the state to deliver services,\u201d Vavi said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile government presents the scheme as a voluntary cost-containment measure, in reality it represents another mechanism to shrink the public service at a time when South Africa is already facing severe shortages of critical personnel across the state.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vavi added that the scheme \u201cdoes not address the real fiscal leakages\u201d, and workers should not be asked to carry the \u201cburden of correcting these structural failures\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf cost containment is genuinely the objective, the government should begin by reducing the size of cabinet and encouraging retirement among ageing political office-bearers who are no longer adding value, rather than targeting nurses, teachers, police officers and other frontline public servants.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trade unions have rejected the National Treasury\u2019s decision to allocate R1.76bn in additional funding to provinces in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,63,99,186,264559,264563,184,185,264562,264560,264564,264561],"class_list":["post-532897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-fiscal-savings-retirement","tag-government-austerity-measures","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-public-sector-job-cuts","tag-public-sector-redundancies","tag-trade-unions-early-retirement","tag-voluntary-exit-programmes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}