Times Of Swaziland: HOW TO GET TO 2021

HOW TO GET TO 2021
================================================================================
Thabiso Dlamini on 23/12/2020 07:46:00


It's the end of the year and if we are lucky, we will be in 2021 in about a
week’s time, although there is absolutely nothing to look forward to but hope
that somehow everything will be okay.
Without a doubt, Eswatini has entered the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic
and it looks like things are about to get rough. The country’s leaders,
particularly Cabinet and the rest of government, need to usher the nation safely
into 2021and come up with new and quick strategies to keep emaSwati alive. We
need to flatten the curve so that Eswatini can avoid another lockdown in order
to keep the economy intact to protect lives and livelihoods. The question is;
how do we get to 2021 alive and how do we prepare the economy to survive what
looks like will be another difficult year?
Factors
There are many factors to consider but the bottom line rests with how government
will decide to use the money it collects from the economy in the upcoming
national budget. Next year’s budget will be the most critical one. Everyone
can see that the economy is at a tipping point; one wrong or selfish move by
government, the economy will collapse. The country’s resources need to be
allocated diligently in a manner that will prevent yet another recession and
fiscal crisis.
Government simply needs to put the interest of ordinary citizens first before
all the frivolous spending we have witnessed in previous budgets. This time
around so much is at stake – lives are at stake – and if government
doesn’t put the nation first, the economy may not survive to table another
budget in 2022. Getting to 2021 means government needs to step up its game to
fix the key issues that are limiting social and economic development progress.
There is no question that the social sector, particularly health and education,
needs to be prioritised in the coming budget. However, we have all seen that no
amount of money can fix Eswatini’s health and education sectors.
Investments
While investments are needed, the current structure and administration of these
sectors creates no value to ordinary citizens and to government as most of the
money evaporates in administration costs, corruption and ineffective delivery of
services. So, while the minister of Finance must continue to prioritise health
and education, Eswatini desperately needs a new model of delivering these
services to the general public. As it is, these sectors are just simply old,
tired and incapable of coming up with innovations that can save us from
COVID-19, deliver world class education to the next generation and, least of
all, carry us through 2021.
There are other thorns that must be uprooted along the way, if Eswatini wants to
realise the benefits of the plans and strategies that have been put in place by
our departed prime minister. The biggest issue is the wage bill and how
government has turned to be the main creator of employment rather than setting
up the private sector to lead in that regard. In the 2021/22 budget, the Finance
minister cannot afford to dish out E8 billion to our darling civil servants
without compromising critical public services such as the response to COVID-19
and healthcare. The civil service has become a mafia that is holding the economy
at ransom.
In the private sector, all this bloated administration would have long gone.
People in the private sector have to make do with subpar wages while our civil
servants are always at logger heads with government demanding the impossible of
the G-wallet. It’s time to cut the wage bill by at least 40 per cent to save
E3.2 billion so that government can allocate that money to real public services
instead of paying people to be on lockdown, to be assistants of assistants, or
simply to do nothing and take accumulated leave days.
Issues
There are other money burning issues that need to be tackled as a matter of
urgency. The Central Transportation Administration (CTA) issue needs to be
finalised and the keys to that garage thrown away to save the country billions
of taxpayers’ money.The looting on capital projects must come to an end
because by now the key players in this industry are well known together with
their tricks of on how they milk the public procurement system.
The minister must turn off this tap and save the G-wallet. The forces,
especially the police and army, are also another big CTA bleeding the economy
dry as they are always guaranteed to overspend on their allocated budgets. On
top of these money problems, Eswatini’s debt is continuing to grow now pushing
47 per cent of the country’s GDP. How will the minister pay for all of this
debt with such a depressed economy and with half of all tax collected directed
to paying civil servants, commissions, etc? Just maybe, with all these taps
shut, government will stop coming after ordinary citizens for SACU receipts we
know nothing about, tax on every move we make, and more taxes just to fill the
revenue gap. Things are not looking good and our spirits are down.