NewsWrap: Many South Africans remain underpaid in comparison to the cost of living

After a few days of grappling with, debating and thinking of how the budget speech affects each of us, the stark reality is that many South Africans remain underpaid in comparison to the cost of living. This was revealed recently by the Living Wage South Africa Network which says that even employed South Africans live in extreme poverty. The organisation says that its time for change and employers need to work at lifting their employees out of poverty.

But with extreme cases of poverty there is also extreme wealth which lives here, as forecasters are predicting that Cape Town could become the fourth fastest growing wealth hubs per capita among the Brics states. This could see an added 6,100 millionaires added to the Cape Town population, representing a jump of 85 percent. This was revealed by Henley and Partners which had found that Cape Town is also becoming a popular retirement destination for those migrating from other parts of the African continent, Europe, Russia and the UK.

Meanwhile, the Western Cape Social Development Department says that it along with various other role players and organisations jumped in to assist residents of the Central Karoo who were hard hit by perishable food which was lost earlier this month due to an electricity outage. The provincial minister for social development Sharna Fernandez says that more than 5,000 food parcels had to be delivered to the Central Karoo which had helped feed more than 17,000 people….

Internationally, a new report has found that poverty in New York City is on the rise, with an alarming rate of children amongst them. The Poverty Tracker Annual Report from Columbia University had sampled 3,000 New York households for three months to track empoyment, assets, debt and health. The report shows that poverty in the city had increased from 18 percent to 23 percent, with the total estimated number of people living in poverty in New York rising from 1,5million in the last reporting cycle to 2million presently. Child poverty in the Big Apple is also up by 66 percent.