Thank you. We will organise outside here and we will see who wins on this one. I am asking for reasonableness.
You talk about excessive. Mr Van Dalen, you earn a salary here. To what extent does that salary exceed the lowest basic salary in this Parliament? I am not saying that the issue of executive pay is not something that needs discussion in our country. It is one of the burning debates, one of the most serious burning debates in our country. But it is not assisted when these epithets are just flung out about excessive, exorbitant and whatever, where I have taken pains to try and explain where this notion of exorbitant and excessive was actually misguided and is bad arithmetic.
The intervention that I have made is that a remuneration panel is sitting and they are about to report to me in the next two weeks on their review of remuneration policies in the state-owned enterprises under the domain of the Department of Public Enterprises. That is where my intervention will go. I will look at their recommendations - those recommendations will be shared with Parliament - and perhaps it will stimulate a debate that will take us beyond just throwing insults and epithets and just presuming that, because an executive manager earns a good salary, that then is something disgraceful, immoral and out of order.
I think we need to have these kinds of debate. But I cannot intervene in terms of saying to Eskom, "you may not pay these salaries", because that would undermine the corporate governance principles under which these institutions operate. I can give guidelines.
However, bear in mind that we are also mindful of the salaries that are paid to workers in these institutions. In Transnet and Eskom, which are two of the biggest employers in this country, a great deal of attention is paid to these kinds of salaries. You will find that Eskom and Transnet workers are probably the best paid workers in the field in South Africa at the moment. Thank you.
Steps taken by department to market and promote Bloodhound Supersonic Car event 144. Mrs X C Makasi (ANC) asked the Minister of Tourism: (a) What has his department done to market and promote the Bloodhound Supersonic Car event to break the land speed record and (b) how will this event benefit the people of the Northern Cape and the country as a whole? NO2667E