eThekwini mayor Gumede’s idea of job creation is typical of her socialist mindset (Mercury, February 23).
Prescription and rigid regulation do not promote economic growth and poverty alleviation. The job of government should be to free-up conditions in which initiative and enterprise can thrive. By prescribing rigid rules as to how contracts are to be carried out will have three outcomes: it will discourage tendering because of the red tape involved which, in turn, will drive up costs and result in protracted delivery time.
In business, time is money. Why should an established business contractor have to supply training for sub-contractors? To what extent would that ‘training’ interfere with the time schedule quoted for the job? To what extent would that result in additional costs to the job or project? Why should the contractor then have to be responsible for the workmanship of the sub-contractor? What firm is going to place its name and image at such risk?
Clearly, mayor Gumede is a stranger to how business in the capitalist world works. Then there is the bureaucratic red tape involved in securing the prescribed 30% quota per ward. Having once tried to set up a collective when I was a councillor, the process is daunting. But then maybe that’s part of Gumede’s strategy so that only cronies and cadres will apply.
Published in the Mercury 2017
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