SCRAP DEBTS OF BLACKLISTED EMASWATI - TUCOSWA

MANZINI – The Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) wants government to scrap all debts of blacklisted people.

The trade union seeks that government removes the records of people who have poor credit history so that they could have better prospects of seeking credit and or loans as means to deal with the impact of the coronavirus.
Blacklisting is a term often thrown around by credit providers to threaten or coerce people with outstanding debt to pay up.

Blacklisting is, in essence, an informal term used to indicate negative information on someone’s credit report.
Secretary General of TUCOSWA Mduduzi Gina said his union wanted government to relieve the citizenry of their financial burden by scrapping all debts of blacklisted people as the coronavirus had led to an increase in unemployment.
He said the country was not only facing high numbers of unemployment but some people were still on unpaid layoffs and this period had already exceeded three months.

Worth noting is that a fortnight ago, government had reported that the cumulative figure of people on unpaid layoffs was 14 048.

Intervention

The unionist said they viewed the intervention of government in this quagmire faced by the masses as essential. He said people were caught between a rock and a hard place as some had lost employment and or were on unpaid leave while in arrears with different credit facilities.

“Such a situation means that the person who lost employment while blacklisted cannot seek any financial assistance anymore. If they seek assistance, records reflect them as people who are not trustworthy in terms of paying back what they owe,” Gina said. Despite government requesting financial institutions to engage people who were indebted to them, Gina claimed that the challenge was not just what had happened in the past four months of the national emergency. The challenge, he said, was that many people in the country had been losing employment while they had commitments to credit facilitators and this affected their prospects of getting any financial assistance in other institutions.

 “Lifting the debts of those blacklisted would mitigate the situation as they would be able to access money. People are currently broke, with no food and cannot borrow money,” he said.
He said the situation was worse for those in the hospitality industry as about 7 700 people were affected by the partial lockdown in the country.
According to Gina, such people were bound to be living in debt already as the money set by government to benefit the masses barely scratched the surface.
This assertion was supported by the Federation of the Eswatini Business Community (FESBC).

Deputy President of FESBC, Hezekial Mabuza, said the call by the union was something that they were in support of and could be engaged on at the social dialogue before being taken to the Labour Advisory Board (LAB). He said there was a general feeling that some institutions did not take COVID-19 seriously and that this was seen by the fact that people were still blacklisted despite the challenging times.
Mabuza claimed that lifting the names of people who were blacklisted could be a solution to many.

For example, he said, there were entrepreneurs whose establishments had gone under and or were not breaking even, yet they were blacklisted for failing to service their loans as the economy had not been doing great leading to the outbreak of the pandemic.
He said such entrepreneurs were not accessing bridging finance to assist them sustain their businesses in such a frustrating time.
Due to this, he said, the only option they had was to minimise staff.

Effects

“The only solution is to get rid of the human resource and when you do that, there are trickle down effects as many people depended on your operations. These people are set on a whirlpool of debt as they had lived from pay cheque to pay cheque while also having debts they serviced. So, lifting their names from credit facilities as bad debtors would change their lives,” Mabuza said.

He mentioned that the coronavirus was an act of God and nobody should be faulted for it as people lost their means of earning a living. He said government should also engage the relevant stakeholders to offer a fair opportunity to all.
“At this instance, it would be proper to absolve all people who cannot service their previous debts and those who were blacklisted before the country went into a partial lockdown to be lifted from the list of bad debts. Everybody needs a fresh start after such a disaster.”

He said legislators should look into amending the Financial and Credit Act to allow people who became bankrupt due to natural disasters to be absolved. Mabuza said no member of the citizenry deserved being thrown into the dustbin as this was an experience that would yield negative results for the citizenry in years to come.

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