CHOICES TO BE MADE

The two major challenges that are standing between the Government of Eswatini and its financial freedom are the huge civil service wage bill and the dependency on loans to fund the national budget.

Despite the hiring freeze that government put into effect last year, the wage bill keeps ballooning such that it is now estimated to be around E8.44 billion, which is equivalent to 37 per cent of government expenditure.

At the same time, government keeps taking loans to pay for critical expenditure items with total debt at just 4.72 per cent shy of the 35 per cent limit to GDP recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

Basically, what it means is that 40 per cent of the money collected from the cash-strapped economy goes to pay salaries of civil servants, while at the same time government has to turn to incessant loans to provide public services.

Even the tax that is collected from the economy is not enough to fully fund government expenditure and yet the country is happy to sacrifice a big share of that money to pay civil servants a majority of whom do not even try to put in eight hours of decent work each day.

This is no joking matter, government needs to rethink its function and start taking serious steps to restructure the public sector so that it can cut all the blatant salary hand-outs that are benefiting a lot of people who add no value to the public sector and the economy at large.
Too often the country likes to whinge about the ballooning wage bill, but in reality no real steps are taken to ensure that government pops the balloon once and for all so that it remains with a sustainable and efficient public sector.

Government simply needs to get away from its protectionist default setting and think about the pressure and harm it is causing the economy in the long-term. The public sector is simply too big for such a small economy; it is time to send people home.

Sensitive

Of course, this is a sensitive issue because it touches on people’s pockets and their livelihoods, however, it is irresponsible of government to keep protecting the employment of a minority while the rest of the population keeps suffering in ever increasing taxes just to maintain a never ending fiscal crisis.
A good place to start sending people home is the security forces, particularly soldiers and police because they are responsible for a huge share of the total wage bill.

Also government must stop rotating the same deadweight within the different ministries and departments and allow for fresh new blood to inject some vitality into the system.
The truth of the matter is that it is cold out here in the private sector. When last did you hear of security guards up in arms demanding their share of cost of living adjustments? What about the textile workers in Matsapha?

The big companies that are paying lucrative salaries in the private sector are really in the minority.
A majority of employees in Eswatini’s private sector do not receive ‘middle class’ salaries and hence why government has become the employer of choice.
There are crazy extremes that people get to just so they can be part of government’s payroll, but that’s a story for another day.
For now, government must focus on ensuring private sector growth so that a majority of Eswatini’s population can be compelled to make their money through private sector business.

Keeping a large public sector is simply an unnecessary drain on all our pockets and it ends up clouding government’s role in managing and developing the economy.

We are not all public servants. Government needs to stop making critical decisions on the economy based on its biased relationship with its civil servants.
Government has to decide whether it wants to keep throwing money at the wage bill and digging more debt holes or start redirecting tax fund where they can create value for money and improve public service delivery.

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