Times Of Swaziland: TIME TO ACCOUNT FOR THE DECISIONS

TIME TO ACCOUNT FOR THE DECISIONS
================================================================================
Editor on 22/06/2021 08:52:00


If Parliament is serious about finding solutions to the ongoing petitions, it
should first acknowledge that these are the making of a government that has
failed to make the right decisions towards service delivery and take appropriate
action against those responsible for this.
The call from some members of the public for government to suspend the E1.4
billion Exim Bank loan from India for purposes of constructing a Parliament
building that is a non-priority infrastructure project when measured against the
urgent needs of the country at present,is a clear indication of the level of
citizen fatigue at blatant disregard for what matters most for our people.
Disregarding the warning from the auditor general who reports annually on how
ministries, departments and agencies continue to spend beyond budgets
appropriated by Parliament on activities that have no budget provision and incur
expenditure without seeking approval from relevant authorities, has exacerbated
the problem. No wonder the public is now questioning how long it has to put up
with forking out over E100 million to a contractor for the cancellation of
projects such as the Sicunusa-Nhlangano Road. This on top of a E600 million loss
with more money still to be injected to complete the road.What hits below the
taxpayers belt on this project, are the findings of the auditor general to the
effect that the contract was awarded without approval of the funding agencies
and that the Ministry of Public Works and Transport had been flouting and
contravening the loan requirements, rules, criterion contractual obligations and
construction standards from the first day of the project.
projects
This is but one example of a catalogue of capital projects initiated in this
country that hardly ever get completed within the initial costs, nor justify
their purpose.The excess waste is money that could be used to cater for
people’s needs and it must begin with proper budget allocations. Prioritising
the local army and flushing it with almost double the funding to that of similar
sized Lesotho, can only result in the excess waste that is playing itself out
where army bosses get escorts and chauffeurs to be driven to shebeens! We have
an army bloated with highly productive youth recruits that are idling, while
schools and hospitals cry out for teachers and nurses who are now being told to
go farming - forgetting that agriculture is allocated a budget less than our
security forces.
Where do our priorities lie? The scale of socio-economic losses through poor
decision making, flouting of regulations and plain negligence in the management
and oversight of our resources can no longer go unpunished. Accounting for this
is a good place to start for our MPs and Cabinet if they are serious about
resolving the current impasse.