Cabinet retreat expectations

Sir,

It should begin with the Cabinet retreat which was scheduled to start taking place yesterday. The retreat should do one of two things; it will either set the pace to catapult Eswatini to a First World nation or it will further hit the brakes on growth and development regressing the economy to a colossal standstill.

Realistically speaking, it is clear that the country was unable to cover all that is laid out in the National Development Strategy (NDS). Instead, the time is now to salvage what can be done going forward to make positive impacts on social development and improve the standard of living for all emaSwati.

Redirect

The retreat will either redirect the country towards attaining First World status or signal a forward downwards spiral towards poverty and hopelessness for the ordinary citizens.

Yet, through the money that government collects from people and businesses in Eswatini, government has the responsibility to re-invest that money on social and economic development programmes that can improve the way we live and the way we do business in the process setting us up for becoming a First World nation.

If government chooses not to take new and brave steps towards funding real social programmes that can deliver the First World vision, but instead decides to spend money on useless programmes/ projects that keep sucking money out of the public purse without significant returns on government revenue, then the economy will go nowhere. If government’s only solid idea to increase its revenues is finding new types of taxes to impose on the consumer, then our lives in Eswatini are headed nowhere!

Commit

The country needs to turn a new page for the economy, therefore, government should commit to funding development for all emaSwati, not just improving the lives of politicians, senior government officials and ghost civil servants. Government has only one and one job alone, which is to turn the First World vision into a lived reality for all.

In delivering this straight-forward task, government has had over 25 years to eradicate poverty, but instead chose to spend a good part of those years growing the public sector, that is, increasing the number of civil servants, thus raising up the civil service wage bill to unsustainable levels.

Funding

Besides funding new wheels for our retired senior government officials, funding shopping sprees on government vehicles and adding to the pile of wrecked government vehicles at the Central Transport Administration (CTA) premises in Mbabane, the retreat needs to bring new order to government operations and stop the ridiculous spending on what is simple wastage.

Yes, Eswatini needs infrastructure and a set of key amenities in the different communities, but if the majority of emaSwati are poor and cannot even afford bus fare or rent money, then what good is the beautiful and luxurious infrastructure if more than half of the population lives on food aid handouts?