Editorial: Stats SA is crucial for the country but government has willingly throttled it

Data are crucial to the running of any successful entity.

A country is no different. 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.

Stats SA is at a tipping point thanks to government cuts.

Funding of R160 million has been slashed. Posts have been frozen; 20% of positions are vacant.

People work six to seven days a week.

We are all for cost-cutting but it is important to cut costs in the right places.

Throttling Stats SA will kill the web of information that is the bedrock of society.

It infringes on the rights of all South Africans to information and it inhibits the ability of the policymakers to make crucial decisions.

It is so bad that the council has threatened to resign.

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.”

This is not something that has fallen from the sky.

It was brought to the attention of Parliament years back, in the tenure of Statistician-General Pali Lehohla.

The government cannot plead ignorance.

Urgent action needs to be taken. Posts need to be unfrozen and funds need to be directed to where they are needed.

This is one department South Africa can literally not afford to lose.

Get in touch  City Press

+27 11 713 9001 news@citypress.co.za Media Park, 69 Kingsway Road, Auckland Park

Rise above the clutter | Choose your news | City Press in your inbox

City Press is an agenda-setting South African news brand that publishes across platforms. Its flagship print edition is distributed on a Sunday.