National Planning Minister Trevor Manual has called for public servants to be banned from contracting with government.

According to Manuel, public servants that do benefit from state contracts should face the consequences. He made the statement during a briefing on the National Development Plan (NDP) during a parliamentary briefing in Cape Town yesterday, 19 February 2013.

His statements come about after Public Service and Administration Minister Lindiwe Sisulu made a similar call a few days ago. She stated that public servants should be outlawed from benefiting from government contracts and to that end she indicated that her department was working on amending the Public Service Act to make it law that civil servants could in no way do business with the state.

Manuel took his call one step further, saying that public servants who were not skilled and effective in their positions should be removed “in the interest of democracy”.

During the briefing, Manuel further indicated that critical steps would be taken this year to implement the NDP, highlighted by President Jacob Zuma in his state of the Nation Address as the “roadmap” to eliminating poverty and reducing inequality in South Africa by 2030.

The NDP is to be broken into five-year portions, in line with the electoral cycle, the first of which will be underpinned and built on the 2014 to 2019 medium-term strategic framework. The Presidency is to lead the formulation of the framework with a first draft expected to be submitted to Cabinet by July this year.