PROBASE LOAN BILL PASSED AFTER GRUELLING FOUR HOURS

MBABANE – It took a long four hours for the House of Assembly to pass the short Probase Swaziland (Upgrading of Unpaved Roads) Loan Bill of 2017.

The deliberations took forever because some Members of Parliament (MPs) felt that the list of the roads that would benefit from the about E1.2 billion project had been doctored by Cabinet.  The MPs said it was unfair that not all Tinkhundla would benefit from the project yet others appeared at least three times.

First to raise concern about the Bill was Matsanjeni North MP Phila Buthelezi, who said out of the 200 kilometres of road to be upgraded using the chemical soil stabiliser only a stretch of 9.2 kilometres had been allocated to the Lubombo Region.

He said it did not make sense that constituencies that had already benefited from the project during its pilot stages were again included in phase one.
MP Buthelezi said he would have expected that the programme would have started in places which did not have any tar.
“I am surprised that places like Mhlaleni-Ludzeludze would get probase and wonder if the road will pass along the one-rooms,” he said.

Buthelezi said he had assumed that the project would be divided equally at 50 kilometres per region instead of the mere five per cent which had been given to the Lubombo Region.
He said technicians from the Ministry of Public Works and Transport had initially submitted a list of the roads which would be paved because they understood traffic flow.

“This new list was approved by Cabinet and it is not the original one that was submitted by the ministry,” said Buthelezi. He urged the MPs to reallocate the road distribution because at the moment, it did not serve the right purpose.
Meanwhile, Zombodze Emuva MP Titus Thwala proposed that a select committee be elected to probe how the list was made, particularly because it was unfair.

Original

He also alleged that there was an original list from the ministry, but the new one was meant to ensure that certain MPs were destroyed to the extent that they would not win the next election.
“This list is a tool that this government is using to sift and sort the next legislators and the committee would greatly assist us to know why it was changed,” said MP Thwala.

He said there was clearly a third force involved in the distribution of this project. He said under phase one it was amazing that one inkhundla appeared three times under the guise that it was Hhukwini.
Thwala said he had always complained about the bad road from Nhlangano Hotel to Ngwane High School, but no mention of it being paved was made.He said all his neighbouring constituencies were included on the distribution list, including one of whom was a Cabinet minister who was allocated twice.

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