MINISTER KNOWS WHAT TO DO

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The move by Members of Parliament to reject Finance Minister Martin Dlamini’s ‘security budget’ on Wednesday is exactly what Cabinet needed to stop bulldozing the national budget through Parliament for rubber stamping.

One need not look further than our high poverty level, low economic growth rate and soaring unemployment as a consequence of this practice. Confronted with reality, the Finance minister must take a moment to ask himself why the most peaceful country on the African continent has one of the highest budget allocations going towards security forces, while 63 per cent of the population live below the poverty datum line.

He told Parliament last week that he was able to force government ministries to cut spending and that he intends to stop projects with no job creation outputs and  reduce the high number of paratastals, but immediately left us bewildered when he deemed it fit to add E300 million to the security forces where he should have cut the most.

He couldn’t justify this. To rub salt to the wound,  he then went on to cut the agriculture budget just as the country tries to recover from the worst drought and food shortages ever experienced. This has been done in total disregard of the directive from the Throne to prioritise this sector for water harvesting, value addition of our produce an food self sufficiency.

 Instead of calling his Cabinet colleague to order, the Agriculture Minister Moses Vilakati has come out to defend this defiance. In our books this could only mean one thing; this minister is equally less concerned with feeding the hungry and therefore, is not fit to hold such an office. Our legislators have also rightly questioned if those starving will be fed with the Bibles to be purchased under the E20 million allocated to fund Christian Education ahead of numerous national priorities.

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