Cabinet has received and considered a report by the Department of Employment and Labour on the progress made to protect and enhance the National Minimum Wage (NMW).
The National Minimum Wage Act, which was enacted in November 2018, laid the foundation for reducing income inequality and wage gaps, and continues to safeguard low-income workers in the country.
“From 1 March 2025, the National Minimum Wage increased by 4% from R27.58 to R28.79 per hour. This increase aims to provide essential economic support and much-needed relief to the six million workers earning within the National Minimum Wage bracket,” Cabinet said in a statement on Thursday.
READ | National Minimum Wage increases
The wage is the minimum amount of pay that an employer is legally required to remunerate employees for work done. No employee should be paid below the NMW.
Foundation learning
Meanwhile, Cabinet has also expressed its support for the strategic reorientation of the basic education sector towards foundation learning.
In January 2025, the Department of Basic Education announced and celebrated a record high matric pass rate of 87.4%.
However, just a month earlier the department had released systematic evaluation results from three different studies showing that nearly 80% of South African children cannot read for meaning, in any language by the age of 10.
To resolve this challenge the department has initiated a strategic reorientation that will have the following initiatives:
• Universal access to quality early childhood development through the mass registration of ECD centre, ensure each child in ECD receives a subsidy, support ECD centre with Learning and Teaching materials, offer support to practitioners to obtain teaching qualifications. The funding of this has been allocated in the 2025 National Budget.
• Review the norms and standards to increase teacher posts in foundation phase teaching
• Funza Lushaka Bursary will be re-oriented to prioritise bursaries to students who wish to teach in the foundation phase.
“This strategic reorientation will strengthen foundational literacy and numeracy skills of learners and ensure that they later be able to table on more complex subjects such as Maths, Science, Accounting and Economics amongst others,” Cabinet said. – SAnews.gov.za
