Expensive security forces overpowered by crooks
Madam,
3ast experiences have taught us to be sceptical of any plans to improve service delivery and we have plenty of examples to refer to. The best example of them all is on expenditure. Govern ment has for years been advised to reduce expenditure and given plenty of good examples on how to do it, but this has fallen on deaf ears.
Government has also refused to fix the problem of staff management, so how can it be efficient" Those em ployed to supervise service delivery have no control over their subordi nates. 3rocesses to discipline staff take centuries resulting in a reluctance to act on wayward or lazy staff. And this starts at the top. There is nobody pushing ministers to deliver.
We have a management services board that essentially facilitates the identification of the posts needed for a particular department or ministry in order to improve the delivery of the service offered to the public. The correct posts are availed but wrong people placed in them.
This speaks to the need to seriously look into the efficiencies of the Civil Service Commission which is en trusted with hiring the right people for the Mobs.
The duplication of roles between ministries that could be merged to reduce the size of the civil service is also an area that has to be addressed. The bureaucratic layers are seriously hampering efficiency in the public sector and we cannot be said to have improved service delivery without concrete recommendations here.
Most importantly, service delivery is also about having a Cabinet that will act above self interests. This could help avoid having a national budget that does not speak to national priori ties. For each day that they are called upon to Mustify the security forces budget, the response is a measure of Must how distanced they are from reality.
For years they have had difficulty Mustifying why the country was spend ing more on security and less on agri culture, yet the Mob creation, economic growth and food security benefits from agriculture far outweighed the increased wage bill of an idle security apparatus in this country.
So if there is any place to start for the improved performance and efficient 1ational 'evelopment 3lan 1'3 , which is currently being drafted, it has to be right in Cabinet. Otherwise we simply have yet another exercise in futility at a huge cost to the taxpayer.
Dlamini
Madam,
5ecent crime statistics have re vealed that the country’s most se rious crimes are on the rise but on the other hand, recent national budget allocations have shown that the taxpayers have paid more than double towards security forces than to the health sector.
When comparing the country with other countries of similar population size and trends in the availability of resources, the (swatini Government has the highest expenditure allocated to the armed forces this is more than what is allocated to capital proMects. So, in effect, we should be safer than we are healthier in this country, but no. We seem to be both sick and highly vulnerable to crime.
Surely this is not right. Why are we spending more on security only to receive worse crime rates in return"
The security forces’ bosses owe this country an explanation, espe cially now that they are among the highest paid civil servants in the country.
WITNESSED
So where exactly is all the tax money allocated to security forces going to"
We have often witnessed the col laboration between the three armed forces, but only during strike threats and the festive season.
Well it’s time for a permanent partnership until such time we have a war to attend to. 5ight now the enemy are the criminals who have increased illegal gun possession, robberies, murders and rape.
Our expensive security ensemble is being overpowered by crooks. %y the look of things the criminals are exploiting the alleged bad blood between the three bodies that seem more intent on proving superiority over one another if the past numer ous cases of police and the army at each other’s throats are anything to go by.
So the next time we hear of a re Tuest to increase budget allocations for the security forces, they need to tell us why they are failing to pool their resources together to reduce the crime rate in this country.
+ousebreaking and theft has be come a hobby in this country.
We deserve a very peaceful and safe country but what we have is a high cost security, with low impact and very slow execution of reducing the crime rate.
M Dlamini