SWAZILAND TURNS DOWN MISS TOURISM WORLD PROPOSAL

MBABANE – The country’s dry coffers have forced SNCAC to turn down a proposal to host, for the first time, the Miss Tourism World beauty pageant.

For the country to host the pageant, government was expected to have a budget of four million British Pounds which is equivalent to E40 million. The pageant was to be hosted in December.

This is bad news for the country as far as hosting international beauty pageants is concerned as Miss Deaf Africa was also cancelled about a month ago. However, the latter pageant was not cancelled for financial constrains but due to Ebola scare.
The Swaziland Beauty Pageants Association’s (SBPA) President Tony Dlamini confirmed knowledge of the proposal for hosting the pageant plus the asking price.

“Since it is an international pageant, we had to submit everything to the Council for approval. However, we did go through some of the requirements, which included the asking price which was E40 million. That money just makes it impossible for the country to even consider hosting the event,” he said.

Since international pageants are within the auspices of the Swaziland National Council of Arts and Culture the Chief Executive Officer Stanley Dlamini was called for comment. he confirmed that the asking price forced them from hosting the pageant.

“The money is just unbelievable and there was just no way could we have considered engaging government to try funding the project. However, we proposed to them to allow us to formulate our own budget which I believe could have been around four million Emalangeni,”
Dlamini explained that if it was up to the country to find ways to pull off the showpiece.

Among other ways they could have engaged the different ministries like the Tourism ministry so as to cut the costs.
“What we assume led to the E40 million was that they might have used international charges for hotels in particular. They also failed to make the breakdown of the asking price we may have been able to work around something to get a reasonable budget.”

Lastly he reckoned that the pageant will now take place in Botswana since the Miss Tourism World organisers were accompanied by Botswana representatives on the day of the submission of the proposal.

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