Times Of Swaziland: EX-POLITICIANS TO SHARE E55 MILLION THIS WEEK

EX-POLITICIANS TO SHARE E55 MILLION THIS WEEK
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 BY STANLEY KHUMALO on 21/01/2019 06:38:00


MBABANE – With the health and the education sectors in tatters,
parliamentarians of the 10th Parliament have convincingly jumped the queue and
will get their gratuity this week.
The health sector is engulfed by a myriad of challenges such that patients in
national health centres, instead of getting medication, are furnished with
prescriptions to obtain their medication from pharmacies at a high cost.
This is inclusive of patients who are over 60 years of age who are not supposed
to pay for their medical expenditure in government health institutions.
Also, leading to the opening of schools, head teachers have been reiterating
their complaints that government was expecting them to be miracle performers.
This, they claimed, was because government wanted great results while failing to
increase the free primary education (FPE) grants and attending to some
schools’ needs.
While the school calendar resumes tomorrow, government is expected to pay in
full for all FPE beneficiaries as the European Union terminated its sponsorship
of about E17 million per year.
Government will in the next few days give former politicians E55 million payout.
This will be in the form of gratuity that shall be paid to all the 95 former
parliamentarians who exited office last year.
bucopho
Also, from the E55 million, government shall be paying 55 constituency headmen
and 336 bucopho. This is according to Finance Circular No.2 of 2013. The
circular stipulates that the ex-gratia payment is a grant payable to former
parliamentarians to assist with the costs of adjusting to non-parliamentary
life.
The ex-gratia payment is available to all parliamentarians who fail to be
re-elected or re-appointed into the new Parliament.
The circular states that in the event the parliamentarian does not fully serve
the five-year-term, the ex-gratia payment will be pro-rated, taking into account
the actual period served.
The ex-gratia will be paid as once-off payment equal to one year basic salary
before taxation for all former parliamentarians.
According to Setsabile Dlamini, Communications Officer of the Ministry of
Finance, government will spend about E55 million on the payout to the former
politicians. “They will be getting their gratuity in the next few days as it
is already being computed,” Dlamini said.
The ex-politicians have been making a lot of noise regarding their pay and
government seems to have bowed down to the pressure. However, it is on record
that some suppliers have not been paid a cent by government, some of whom have
been owed for close to a year now.
Some of the former politicians engaged by this publication stated that they
needed their money regardless of the ongoing challenges. The politicians said as
much as they were willing to assist government in anyway possible, they needed
their money as well.
Schools
The former legislators were engaged on whether they would be willing to get
their gratuity later on after government had fulfilled its obligations in
schools and health sector or paid owed suppliers who were ideally first in line.
The questioning on whether the legislators were willing to receive their
gratuity prior to the State addressing the national challenges emanated from the
documented shortfalls experienced in recent times.