30 PATIENTS TURNED BACK DAILY

 Sir,

Our economy has a limited private sector and so it relies heavily on government to drive growth.  The implications of this economic arrangement is that government has to continuously implement expansionary policies in hopes to stimulate growth, which ends up in expenditures that exceed revenues and ever increasing public debt. At the same time, the need for government to continuously borrow from the local economy is contributing to a liquidity squeeze which is hampering growth and employment opportunities.

Capable 

But honestly, government’s track record tells us that it is not capable of creating opportunities and driving growth, but really only capable of driving our economy into a fiscal crisis. The main reasons why the health sector is failing to deliver, is because of weak governance and lack of sound public financial management. 

The problem is that our government is happy to suck all the money out of the economy and blow it on expenditures that do not add any value, or better yet, expenditures that do not eventually generate income for government and the nation as a whole. 

Its greatest achievement was establishing its money vacuum cleaner, the Eswatini Revenue Authority (SRA). Through SRA, government will go out of its way to fill its coffers even if it means breaking the livelihoods of the most vulnerable people in Eswatini.

Taxing 

Taxing the economy through the roof has not created new businesses and employment opportunities, but instead, further stagnated the economy leading the health sector to where it is today. 

The very few people in our economy who get the opportunity to work and earn a decent salary have to give up half of their pay cheques to government, yet it has the audacity to ask for more money on top of that. 

It is sickening that on average, 30 COVID-19 patients, who need critical care, are turned back at health facilities around the country on a daily basis. This would not be happening if government had been prudent in the way it spends our hard-earned taxes. 

T Dlamini

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