GIVE US REALISTIC, FUNDED PRIORITIES

WHEN will Eswatini ever enjoy a normal January? Year on year, the country seems to wind up December embattled invarious economic and social crises due to mismanagement of public finances, that is, the money that makes up the G-wallet.

Every year in January guaranteed the country can expect threats of mass action strikes from teachers and nurses and other unionised workers that make up the glorious civil service.

Government always finds itself in a pickle trying to dodge the cost-of-living demands from the ever ballooning number of civil servants, parents are always up in arms trying to avoid top-up fees from unyielding school heads, and there are always issues with government delaying payments for free primary education (FPE), shortage of stationery among other school supplies, delayed food deliveries for the school feeding programme, and in all of this perfect mess, government always manages to cut allotments to the internal and external scholarship funds so that students from the University of Eswatini (UNESWA) can dish out their own threats and strikes when that joke for a national university eventually opens.

Soon enough, the elderly and everyone else who has a claim on the G-wallet will follow suit and demand what they think is owed to them every January.This is the same old story of January and it needs to come to an end.

How can the country put an end to the social and economic strife that always blemishesthe beginning of the new year? It starts with setting a realistic national budget, committing to it, and seeing it through without fiddling with allocated funds from one budget item to support other budget items that end up overtaking all other national priorities.

Eswatini has to be clear about its development priorities and stop overcommitting herself to national programmes/projects that have no funds allocated to them. Instead of being development success stories, these special projects that we overcommit to ourselves end up being money pits that further deteriorate the state of G-wallet in Eswatini.

Yes, the country must develop and emerge as a First World nation but we must be clear about what chunks of the development pie Eswatini is ready to bite and chew, and for what purpose.

It is terrifying to think about all the financial resources channelled towards some programmes like FPE only to find that there are more problems created in the long-run than actual steps taken towards achieving our Vision 2022 or at least achieving a decent quality education. It is even more scary to note that government is usually quick to cut funding towards programmes that should for the most part remain untouchable because of the return on investment the country could get from them.

For example, why is government quick to cut scholarships for tertiary students, who for the most part, when they are able to get a decent education outside of Eswatini, are able to establish decent lives for themselves and support their families here in Eswatini? Who qualifies to get government scholarships, anyway? If anything, the support given to Eswatini’s youth to further their studies outside of Eswatini should increase rather than the chop-chop that keeps happening. UNESWA, which was once part of a recognisable BOLESWA is quickly turning into a 4-year playground after which students come out with certified unemployment degrees.

In other words, the value the country derives from financially supporting Eswatini’s tertiary students at UNESWA is close to nothing because that university has not been made priority in terms of our national budget. There is nothing the country is doing to secure the future of our youth generation. The education system is quickly turning into garbage in/garbage out, and boy oh boy doesn’t the Ministry of Education and Training waste a lot of money in the process!

The education, health, and public service sectors are a huge carfuffle that need sorting out, particularly in terms of the commitments and realistic budget government can set aside to support each. Particularly, health, and education should not be taken lightly to become scapegoats of budget cuts when government fails to balance the national accounts.

The education sector is about the country’s youth to make sure that they too have secured futures in the First World that Eswatini is envisioned to become. The health sector is about taking care of the lives of all Emaswati and making sure that we are all kept alive and healthy to lead quality lives and contribute to increased production and productivity in the economy. The public sector is government’s own deliberate mess that needs to go on the chopping board without being apologetic. Enough with the circus that has become of January: government must give us a well-balanced and realistic budget and stick to it!

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