Times Of Swaziland: WE DESERVE PEACEFUL, SAFE ESWATINI

WE DESERVE PEACEFUL, SAFE ESWATINI
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Editor on 26/02/2024 10:00:00


Sir,
Past national budget allocations have shown that taxpayers have paid more than
double towards security forces than to the health sector, yet Eswatini is among
the most peaceful countries on the African continent. When comparing the country
with other countries of similar population size and trends in the availability
of resources, Lesotho and Mauritius, the Eswatini Government has the highest
expenditure allocated to the armed forces; this is more than what is allocated
to capital projects.
Safer
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’ leaders owe this country an explanation,
especially now that they are among the highest paid civil servants in the
country. The Malaysian Government was once faced with a similar predicament, so
it decided that since the country was not at war, it would use the army and
correctional officers in a well coordinated and collaborative way to fight
crime.
Cleaning
They started cleaning house in their police service by removing all police
officers from behind the desks. All clerical work was given to civil servants
who had little or no work to do in the various ministries, especially where the
duplication of duties was rampant. Does this sound familiar? Idle Malaysian
civil servants were transferred and given office duties in police stations and
this allowed extra police officers to be put on the streets and suddenly there
was more visibility. The army also put its idle personnel on joint patrols with
the police. The end product was a very high impact in terms of visibility and
crime reduction, which contributed to the rapid results desired by the citizens.
Back home, we have often witnessed the collaboration between the three armed
forces, but only for certain incidents. Well it is time for a permanent
partnership until such time we have a war to attend to. So the next time we hear
of a request 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. 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.