‘FIRE PERSONNEL LEASING OUT GOVT HOUSES’

MATSAPHA – Senior personnel at Eswatini Fire and Emergency Services (EFES) are allegedly leasing out government houses allocated to them.

This is an allegation that has been brought forth by some junior officers at the Matsapha Station. The junior personnel are said to have been up in arms with their seniors following the construction of a new block of flats designated for personnel of the institution. According to impeccable sources, two senior personnel were allocated houses and instead of using them, they gave them to individuals who were not part of the human resource within the station. The officers, who were aggrieved by this act, alleged that when the block of flats were completed by the Eswatini National Housing Board, preference was given to senior personnel despite that there was a backlog of juniors who had been on the waiting list for over a decade.

Newly

The newly-constructed flats have two bedrooms each with a living room, kitchen and bathroom. The commercial market value for the same flats ranges between E2 300 and E3 000; however, civil servants pay about E600 for them. According to the junior personnel, the leasing and or allocation of the State houses to people who were not in the civil service defeated the purpose of having more houses constructed to meet the demand. The allegations further insinuated that the houses were leased to strangers by the senior personnel despite this act being illegal, according to the housing regulations laid out by the Ministry of Public Service. Some of the junior officers alleged that their call to have the anomaly rectified had fallen on deaf ears as nobody had come to their rescue. Following the allegation by the junior personnel, this reporter visited the Matsapha Fire Station.

An enquiry among some of the residents within the new block of flats revealed that there was truth in the allegation. This is because one of the people occupying the houses confessed to being a child to a senior officer and was staying in the house with two minors. When she was requested to expand on whether she was residing with the government official, the occupant of the house requested that the senior official be approached to expand on the issue.

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