This means materials
including paper and chalk are not available because the so-called Free Primary
Education (FPE) grants has not been paid. Electricity bills also cannot be
paid.
Government is require by
the Swazi Constitution to provide free places for all primary school children.
It pays E560 per pupil. In Swaziland, seven in ten people have incomes of about
E25 per day.
The Swazi Observer reported one school
principal saying, ‘It is very hard to get by without the FPE grant because we
heavily rely on it for working material. We haven’t just run out of material
but we don’t even have funds to buy electricity which is a necessity at school.
‘Lessons have come to a
halt because we can’t help the situation. When schools opened, we used the
material that was left from the previous year but it was not enough to sustain
us for long and we have exhausted it.’
Meanwhile, many children
have been denied places at school because they do not have personal identity
numbers (PINs). This is the second year that this problem has happened. Deputy
Prime Minister has now said the Ministry of Education and Training should start
admitting all Swazi children without PINs at schools.
The Ministry had previously said to avoid audit
queries it had to pay fees against a PIN not a name of a pupil.
The funding crisis is not new. In June 2018
headteachers and principals told the Swazi
Observer they
were in huge debt and unable to pay suppliers. It said the problem was with
the government which faced financial challenges.
The Swaziland national budget has been mismanaged for
years. Swaziland is broke and the government is living from hand to mouth. In
June 2018 the then Finance Minister Martin Dlamini told the House of Assembly
that as of 31 March 2018 government owed E3.28 billion. Dlamini said budget
projections indicated ‘exponential growth in the arrears’.
The spotlight on spending in Swaziland intensified
when in April 2018 at a party to mark both his 50th birthday and the
anniversary of Swaziland’s Independence from Great Britain, King Mswati III,
the kingdom’s absolute monarch, wore a watch worth US$1.6 million and a suit weighing 6 kg studded with diamonds. Days
earlier he had taken delivery of his second private jet. This one, an Airbus
A340, cost US$13.2 to purchase but with VIP upgrades was estimated to have cost US$30 million.
See also
Chaos
and confusion across Swaziland as new school year starts
Children
at risk of food poisoning as Swaziland Govt’s financial crisis continues
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