Members of Parliament in
Swaziland rejected the entire national budget and called for it to be replaced with
one that favoured ordinary people.
The unprecedented move came
on Wednesday (1 March 2017) when the budget delivered the previous Friday by Martin
Dlamini, Swazi Minister for Finance, was supposed to be debated and approved.
Instead, MPs rejected the E21.8
billion (US$1.66bn) national budget. A motion
called for the budget to be scrapped because it was not responding to the
needs of the people.
They called for a revised
budget to be tabled that addressed the needs for portable clean water; feeder
roads networks; increase of community projects budget; an increase in the
elderly and people living with disability grants, taking into consideration the
cost of living; an increase in the allocation of the ministry of agriculture
for food security and the construction of new health clinics.
The Minister of Finance was
told to bring a new budget to Parliament on Friday (3 March 2017).
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