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WE WANT OUR MONEY: SWEET MEMBERS

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MANZINI - Seemingly, things are no longer sweet as honey for some members of SWEET Fund. This, as some members of the Swaziland Women Economic Empowerment Trust (SWEET) Fund, which was pioneered by Her Majesty the Indlovukazi, flocked the organisation’s office to demand their monies yesterday.
According to the group of women who were found at SWEET offices in Manzini yesterday, since they joined the fund in 2014, they had never got annual shares.

They said to join the fund in April 2014, they paid E500 as joining fee and from there, they were allegedly saving at least E100 per month.


Agreement


They claimed that the agreement was that a member could borrow money at a certain interest and based on her own savings. However, some alleged that borrowing money from the fund was a strenuous process as it allegedly took the fund ages to release the money.
On the other hand, some of the women alleged that since joining the fund and saving as expected on a monthly basis, their attempts to borrow money were not successful.


They alleged that they used to be promised that their loans would be paid via MTN Eswatini’s Mobile Money (MoMo), something which never happened.
Moreover, they alleged that the fund breached the agreement it had with them, which they signed in 2015 and said members would be paid their shares annually and the amount would depend on the profits for that particular year.


“However, since 2015 when we signed the shares agreement, we have not received anything from the fund,” they alleged.
They claimed that in October 2018, they went to the fund’s offices to enquire about the shares and they were told that the organisation was still waiting for auditors.


Some of them alleged that on January 26, 2019, they approached the fund over the matter and they were promised that relevant structures were working on it.
They alleged that they were promised to be updated regarding a date for an annual general meeting (AGM) where the audit report would be issued before dividends could be shared.


Management


“Shockingly, today (yesterday) management told us that it might happen that some of our monies could not be traced,” they alleged.
They also claimed that management told them that it was still trying to work with their predecessors over the matter.


“Since the fund was pioneered by Her Majesty the Queen Mother, the management made it clear that it would not like to be too much involved in the anomalies since they were not in office when it happened,” claimed the angry members of the fund.


The claimed that they joined the fund because they were told that it was pioneered by the Queen Mother and it was introduced to them via their royal kraals.
They said their only demand was that the fund should pay them their joining fees, monthly savings plus interest. They emphasised that because of what transpired, they wanted out.

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