Swaziland is budgeting to
build the Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini a retirement house for E5.5m even
though members of parliament rejected the move last year.
The MPs said last year the
kingdom was too poor to afford the house. The money is back on the table this
year even though Finance Minister Martin Dlamini announced in his budget speech
on Thursday (1 March 2018), ‘Government spending continues to outpace its
ability to raise enough revenues resulting in cash flow challenges and
accumulation of arrears.’
Dlamini was not elected to
the office of Prime Minister. In Swaziland political parties are banned from
taking part in elections and King Mswati III who rules Swaziland as sub-Saharan
Africa’s last absolute monarch chooses the PM and government ministers.
Dlamini is aged 75 and in
poor health. He is widely expected to retire at the next national election due
sometime in 2018.
The house in Thembelihle will
have four bedrooms, all with en-suite bathrooms.
The house is only part of
Dlamini’s retirement package. The Financial Circular No 2 of 2013 sets out his
benefits. He will receive 80 percent of his final salary until he dies. In 2013
it stood at E617,646 (US$51,700). In Swaziland seven in ten of the estimated
1.1 population have incomes less than the equivalent of US$2 per day.
The Swazi taxpayer will
contribute the full amount payable to a medical aid scheme of which the Prime
Minister is a member. They will provide a house and a vehicle of the same
status as the one he has while in office. Dlamini will also ‘be afforded
security in line with the risk profile as determined by the Commissioner of
Police’. He will be provided with a personal assistant.
When the cost of the PM’s
house was included in the 2017 national budget, MPs protested that the amount was too much and should be frozen
to a time when the kingdom could afford it.
Finance Minister Martin Dlamini
did not make reference to the PM’s house in his budget speech, but he did state
that the budget only included ‘the most critical expenditure items’.
He increased Value Added
Tax (VAT) by 1 percent to 15 percent and said he was exploring the possibility
of putting VAT on electricity prices. There is already a 15 percent increase in
electricity tariffs due on 1 April 2018. Commentators have said this will have
a big effect on the poor. The Times
of Swaziland, the only
independent daily newspaper in the kingdom said the ‘budget robs the poor’.
See also
BUILDING
HOTEL A BUDGET PRIORITY
‘CABINET DEFIES KING OVER BUDGET’
SWAZI
PM’s FALSE CLAIM TO BE A DOCTOR
TRUE LIFE OF SWAZI PRIME MINISTER
https://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/true-life-of-swazi-prime-minister.html
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