GREEDY SWAZI PM ‘COST 500 JOBS’

The Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) has hit out at the greed of Barnabas Dlamini, the kingdom’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister, his deputy, four members of the Swazi Royal Family, at least nine cabinet ministers (past and present) and a gaggle of petty council officials, who are embroiled in a controversy over the purchase of Swazi nation land in Mbabane.

SCCCO says the million emalengeni they have saved themselves in the land purchase could have saved 500 of the jobs of civil servants that have to be cut in an attempt to gain International Monetary Fund (IMF) support for a loan after the Swazi economy went into meltdown after years of mismanagement by governments appointed by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

The comments come in an end of year message delivered by Bishop Meshack Mabuza, the SCCCO chair.

The following is how the Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper, reported the statement. LINK

23 December 2010

‘E1million land discounts could have saved 500 jobs’

MBABANE – The Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) has expressed discontent over the land purchase discounts received by ministers saying that money could have gone towards job saving.

In an end of year statement released yesterday touching on wide ranging issues, the SCCCO, through its Chairperson Bishop Meshack Mabuza, expressed concern in the manner in which the matter, which is now under parliament investigation, was handled.

"Look at the Circular No 1 which gives our politicians undeserved and unaffordable pay increases while at the same time they are calling for 7 000 of the lowly paid to become unemployed.

Allocate

"Look at how they allocate themselves E1 million discounts on land, how many jobs does that equate to? For those on the grade of a lowly office cleaner who earns E2 000 per month, that is 500 jobs that could have been saved, and 5 000 lives spared starvation, desperation and humiliation," he says.

The SCCCO also expresses concern over the issue of human rights.

"We stand beside our brothers and sisters whose pain was so openly and tragically expressed at our people’s parliament this month.

We will not let their stories be forgotten or their suffering ignored. If civil society is about one thing only, it is about calling those in power to account. The courts are an important way to stand up for our rights but they are not the only ones.

"We must recognise that we have to stand up for ourselves each and every day as well; we must retain our dignity in our homesteads, our families, our clans and our communities," it states.

Mabuza says as a Coalition they will continue to campaign for the ability for the people to claim their rights and human dignity.

SWAZI PM AND ECONOMY MELTDOWN

Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister, has said he and his government had ‘no inkling’ that the kingdom would have its revenues from the Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) cut, until just before it happened.

He told the Times of Swaziland, the only independent daily newspaper in the kingdom, this was why he went ahead with awarding himself, cabinet ministers, former prime ministers and members of parliament huge pay and benefit rises this year, worth about E60 million.

In short, he thought the money was there to pay for it all. He claimed it was right to go ahead because the increases were ‘based on the recommendations of a consultants’ report, drafted in early 2009 when the necessary funds were allocated for that purpose’.

You have to admire the brass neck of the man, if he thinks we will fall for that one. The Swaziland Government was warned for years that it was spending too much on public service salaries and that its policy of spending recklessly would result in disaster.

In 2008, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported, ‘When the rest of sub-Saharan Africa was growing over the last decade, the economy of the Kingdom of Swaziland stagnated.’

Also in 2008, I reported that it was widely predicted in the international community that SACU revenues that amounted to about 70 percent of the Swazi Government’s total income would fall from 2010.

And that’s what happened: they fell from E6 billion (about $US875 million) in 2009 to E1.9 billion in 2010.

So once again we must conclude that Dlamini and his government are either telling bare-faced lies or they are so inept they don’t understand what is going on around them – the truth is the economy couldn’t afford his benefits package.

And once it was clear to one and all that the money wasn’t available to meet the cost, Dlamini didn’t order the increases to be cancelled – he went ahead ensuring that while most of the Swazi population (70 percent of whom earn less than one US dollar a day) got even poorer, he and his cronies would get considerably richer.

See also

WHERE THE FINANCIAL BLAME LIES

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2009/08/where-financial-blame-lies.html

FALSEHOODS ON THE SWAZI ECONOMY

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2008/07/falsehoods-on-swazi-economy.html

SWAZI PM FLIES TO ‘BOGUS AWARDS’

Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister has flown to the Bahamas to collect his human rights medal, even though there are doubts that it is a genuine award.

A ceremony will take place tomorrow (2 October 2010) hosted by World Citizen Awards. After an outcry following the announcement that Dlamini would receive a medal for his outstanding contribution to human rights, doubts were cast about whether the award was genuinely given for endeavour, or whether it was merely a vanity award.

After the Bahamas, Dlamini travels to Washington to see the International Monetary Fund in an attempt to secure its support for a loan from the African Development Bank.

Both the IMF and the World Bank declined to support the loan application previously because of the poor record Dlamini’s government had on handling the economy.

Dlamini will have to convince the IMF he can be trusted with the money. This may prove difficult because within the past few days it was announced in Swaziland that politicians’ perks would rise and that former prime ministers and their wives will be paid monthly allowances.

Finance Minister Majozi Sithole said these expenses were not budgeted for.

There are also fears that the government has run out of money and cannot pay its civil servants from October 2010 after it raised their salaries by 4.5 percent, against the wishes of the IMF.

Before he left Swaziland Dlamini told reporters he didn’t know when he would return. Maybe he knows something we don’t.