South Africa

Standard Bank, retrenchments and farming: Tito Mboweni slammed

Tito Mboweni slammed for suggesting retrencehd Standard Bank employees go into farming.

Finance minister Tito Mboweni horrified Twitter users when he dished up mopane worms with rice instead of pap.
Finance minister Tito Mboweni horrified Twitter users when he dished up mopane worms with rice instead of pap. (Esa Alexander)

Finance minister Tito Mboweni received backlash on social media after tweeting that retrenched Standard Bank staff should go into farming.

The minister tweeted this in response to news that Standard Bank would be closing 91 of its branches and retrenching about 1,200 employees.

Mboweni also attributed the job losses to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

"The unwelcome consequences of the 4IR!Digitization vs Jobs, people, families! Very sad! You cannot blame the bank. They confront REALITY!" he tweeted.

The job losses come as part of the bank's effort to go digital. Reuters reported that most of the affected branches would shut down by June.

Twitter was not impressed with Mboweni's suggestion. 

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