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IS GOVT PRIORITISING NEEEDS OF PEOPLE IN ITS SPENDING?

30/03/2017 07:48:00 By Vusi Kunene

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THERE is a huge debate and discussions on the country’s budget these days. I have also said something about it and may be repetitive, but I am surprised about government’s expenditure. There is this, what they call a people-oriented budget which I am inclined to agree to, but ours is not people-oriented.

I also wonder, why is our government always going to meetings and agreeing to and signing documents which they know they are not going to implement?
Or we are waiting for a time when we will be forced to implement those documents and then run from pillar to post trying to get funds to implement them. We have time and we must be preparing ourselves. We do not want to experience the AGOA debacle again where certain laws had to be changed overnight so that we could salvage a situation which we should have prepared ourselves for.

We have the Maputo Declaration which a lot has been said about and need not add anything. Unless government comes out to tell us that someone forced them to agree to this, I hold the view that we voluntarily agreed and signed that declaration. Are we not a nation of liars then when we fail to implement or at least try to implement what we agreed to, voluntarily? Or we are waiting for a time where we will rush to implement because we are out of time and there will be no proper scrutiny of what we are now doing like with AGOA?

I anticipate that we will have an excuse to implementing this declaration. I can safely assume that the excuse will be lack of money. I will disagree with that excuse and point out that even if we are failing to reach the 10 per cent of the budget we would be trying than what we are doing now. Government has wrong priorities that are of no assistance to the people. If we could limit the funds that are channelled towards those things that are of no great help, then we would have some funds or at least increased funding of necessary amenities of life.

I am still failing to understand the reason behind spending 12.4 per cent of the budget on security. What is worse is that the biggest chunk of that amount goes to Defence.
When the Defence is to be audited we are told that national security will be compromised, and therefore the spending cannot be monitored by civilians.

That means the Defence audits itself and there are no external controls yet big amounts of taxpayers’ money go to them. I feel the E2.7 billion towards security is too much of an amount if you also compare it to the E2.2 billion that goes to health. It is like we are saying we value security than life. We are not under threat as a country for crying out loud.

If we look to at the performance of the security forces from the previous year, it is clear there is no need for such a huge amount to go towards them. If we were under threat then it would be different because we would be soliciting ammunition. That in itself is also a problem because even the soliciting of arms is not transparent. We are not told where we get the arms from and whether the prices are competitive.

If the E585 million increment towards the security budget was to be used for education, will we not have been investing in the right way? That may be ‘bemusing’ to the minister of Finance as he sees nothing wrong with the expenditure. The minister says such an increment is for improved emergency response by the security forces and crowd management.

How many emergencies do we have in the country to justify such a huge increment? I am yet to witness a problem with crowds in the country other than the few occasions when we have some events. Even then Swazis generally behave themselves and there is no justification for so much money to be spent on this. Unless it is for the brutality we witness when people exercise their right to freedom of expression by demonstrating because that is the only time we see security forces in action. Most of the time, it is not dealing with the crowd but the application of violence against defenceless citizens of the country.

If the minister of Finance can be amused by prioritising the needs of the people that being amused by wrongly spending taxpayers’ money, I would appreciate it. Why is priority given to things that do not assist Swazis? Will we take patients to South Africa till kingdom comes when we have the means to have our own?