SWAZI KING’S AIRPORT HAS NO TAXIWAY

It is increasingly difficult to believe a word the Swaziland Government says about the kingdom’s Sikhuphe International Airport.

The airport is being built in a wilderness about 80 km from the Swazi capital, Mbabane. In November 2013, it was announced that it was completed and ready to open as soon as King Mswati III gave the word.

Now, the Times Sunday newspaper in Swaziland has reported, ‘Just when it was declared ready for use, it was discovered that there was no taxiway.’

It added, ‘Contractors are now busy constructing the taxiway.’

However, it has been known for at nearly three years that the airport had no taxiway.

In February 2011, Swazi Media Commentary revealed this and reported that without a taxiway the airport would not be able to handle large numbers of planes taking off and landing, thereby severely limiting the number of passengers and amount of cargo the airport could handle if it ever opened.  

To handle large numbers of passengers, the airport needs to be able to get planes to fly off quickly and land quickly. Once one plane is safely on the ground after landing it drives out of the way on the taxiway to allow another plane to land or take off on the runway it has just vacated.

But, with no taxiway, once a plane has landed it will have to back up along the runway to take passengers to the terminal, thereby blocking the runway for any other plane wanting to land or take off.

The Times in its report quoted Prince Hlangusemphi, Minister of Economic Planning and Development saying the taxiway was not on the original plan for the airport.

He said the taxiway would be completed ‘very soon’. Then, he said, the airport could be officially opened by King Mswati.

When that date will be has not been announced. Sikhuphe has been under construction for at least 10 years. The date for the airport’s opening in 2010 was missed and has been put back a number of times since. In November 2013, the Swaziland Civil Aviation Authority (SWACAA) said the airport was now completed and operational, but no flights have been in or out since.

The Sikhuphe project has been the subject of much misinformation from the King, the government he hand picks, and civil aviation officials in Swaziland.

They regularly announce new deadlines for completion and opening of the airport, but these dates come and go and Sikhuphe remains unfinished. No explanations for the missed deadlines are usually given. When they are they often relate to claims that ‘bad weather’ hampered construction work.

No independent study on the need for Sikhuphe Airport was ever undertaken and the main impetus behind its construction has been King Mswati, who rules Swaziland as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch. He believes the airport will lend credibility to his dream to make Swaziland a ‘First World’ nation by 2022.

Despite claims over the past years that international airlines are keen to fly into Sikhuphe, no agreements have been signed.

In November 2013, SWACAA confirmed that the Swazi Government was ready to recreate the defunct Royal Swazi National Airways Corporation (RSNAC0 and would set about purchasing a 100-seater jet, at a cost estimated by the Times of Swaziland of E700 million (US$70 million). This compares to the E125 million budgeted for free primary school education in Swaziland this year. It is not clear where the money to buy the aircraft would come from.

SWACAA said RSNAC would fly to 10 destinations in Africa and Asia. Observers estimated RSNAC would probably need a minimum of 10 aircraft to service the routes. For that to happen, Swaziland would have to spend about E7 billion on aircraft. Such a sum of money would bankrupt the kingdom. To put the cost in context the Central Bank of Swaziland has estimated the kingdom’s gross official reserves were E8.24 billion at the month ended November 2013.

Media reports in Swaziland suggest the cost of Sikhuphe has been about E3 billion so far from an initial budget of E500 million.

As long ago as 2003, the International Monetary Fund said Sikhuphe should not be built because it would divert funds away from much needed projects to fight poverty in Swaziland. About seven in ten of King Mswati’s 1.3 million subjects live in abject poverty, earning less than US$2 per day.

Critics of Sikhuphe have argued for years that there is no potential for the airport. Major airports already exist less than an hour’s flying time away in South Africa with connecting routes to Swaziland and there is no reason to suspect passengers would want to use the airport at Sikhuphe as an alternative.

Swaziland’s present airport at Matsapha, situated near a main road between Swaziland’s capital city Mbabane and the kingdom’s commercial centre, Manzini, only carries about 70,000 passengers a year.

As recently as October 2013 a report from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Sikhuphe International Airport was widely perceived as a ‘vanity project’ because of its scale and opulence compared with the size and nature of the market it seeks to serve.

In June 2013 an engineer’s report was published by to the Mail and Guardian newspaper in South Africa saying the structure of the airport was defected and large jet airlines would not be able to land,

See also

NEW NATIONAL AIRLINE A WASTE OF MONEY

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2013/11/new-national-airline-waste-of-money.html

 

KING’S AIRPORT ‘WILL BE UNUSABLE’

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2013/06/kings-airport-will-be-unusable.html

KING’S AIRPORT NOT READY UNTIL 2016

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2012/12/kings-airport-not-ready-until-2016.html

GOVT TO BLAME FOR HUNGER LEVELS

Prince Hlangusemphi, Swaziland’s Minister of Economic Planning and Development, was wide of the mark when he told the World Food Programme (WFP) that eradicating hunger in the kingdom was a ‘tangible goal’ that the government was committed to achieving.

He was responding to a report that said Swaziland lost US$92 million per year in the economy because people were too hungry to work properly. 

But, the real evidence is that it is the Swaziland Government, hand-picked by absolute monarch King Mswati III, which is the major cause of the hunger.

In 2012, three separate reports from the World Economic Forum, United Nations and the Institute for Security Studies all concluded the Swazi government was largely to blame for the economic recession and subsequent increasing number of Swazis who had to skip meals.

The reports placed the blame at the financial mismanagement of the Swazi government.

The reports listed low growth levels, government wastefulness and corruption, and lack of democracy and accountability as some of the main reasons for the economic downturn that has led to an increasing number of starving Swazis.

The Swazi Government was also accused earlier this year of deliberately withholding food donated from overseas as aid from hungry people as a policy to induce them to become disaffected with their members of parliament and blame them for the situation. Newspapers in Swaziland and abroad reported the government wanted to punish the kingdom’s MPs for passing a vote of no confidence against it.

Earlier this year it was revealed that the Swaziland Government had sold maize donated as food aid by Japan for hungry children in the kingdom on the open market and deposited the US$3 million takings in a special bank account. 

The latest report called the Cost of Hunger in Africa was prepared by the government of Swaziland working together with WFP. It found that around 270,000 adults in Swaziland, or more than 40 percent of its workers, suffer from stunted growth due to malnutrition. As a result, they were more likely to get sick, do poorly in school, be less productive at work and have shorter lives.

See also

ECONOMY FAILS, ONE IN TEN GO HUNGRY

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2013/01/one-in-ten-go-hungry-economy-fails.html

 

‘CORRUPTION LEADS TO STARVATION’

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2012/09/corruption-leads-to-starvation.html

 

GOVT-DONATED MAIZE SCANDAL WON’T DIE

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2013/03/govt-donated-maize-scandal-wont-die.html

GOVT DONATED MAIZE SCANDAL WON’T DIE

The scandal of Swaziland Government taking US$3 million worth of maize donated for the hungry in the kingdom and selling it on the openmarket will not die down

The Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, called it ‘callousness’ and a ‘dirty shame’. 

Senior Royal, Prince Hlangusemphi, who is Minister for Economic Planning and Development is under attack after it was revealed that 11,498 metric tonnes of maize had been donated by Japan to feed the hungry, but had been sold through the National Maize Corporation.

The Observer, in an editorial comment, said today (13 March 2013) the Prince, ‘better have plausible answers when he responds to the issue of a maize donation that ended up in a government account, instead of the tummies of thousands of impoverished Swazis who needed it the most.

‘In fact, it is still hard to believe that government decided to sell the maize so it could swell up its dwindling coffers, doing this at the expense of multitudes that go to bed without anything to eat as a result of the dire straits they live in on a daily basis.’

In Swaziland, three people in ten are malnourished and rely on humanitarian food aid to survive.

The Observer went on to call the government’s action ‘callousness’. It said, ‘to let down its needy citizens is such a low down, dirty shame’.

The Observer said the decision to sell the maize rather than give it to the intended recipients, ‘simply qualifies the assertion held by a larger segment of the populace that this government just does not care about the plight of the people at grass root level’.

It said the government had been, ‘hoarding donor food in a bid to make a quick buck, which is then stashed at the Central Bank, as to for whose benefit, only they know’.

It added, ‘This then clearly shows how greedy they can be.’

See also

GOVT SELLS MAIZE DONATED FOR HUNGRY

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2013/03/govt-sells-maize-donated-for-hungry.html

MINISTER WRONG OVER SACKING WORKERS

Swaziland’s Minister of Economic Planning and Development Prince Hlangusemphi seriously misled people when he said that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was forcing the government to sack workers.

Hlangusemphi said this as part of a larger attack on the IMF, which he claimed did not want to help Swaziland get out of its financial mess.

Hlangusemphi was speaking in an interview with the Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, when he said the government would not downsize the Swazi civil service ‘as recommended by the IMF’. He went on to say that if the government sacked workers without consultation it would be in trouble with organizations such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

But where Hlangusemphi is wrong is that the IMF has not called for civil servants to be sacked, but it has suggested the government wage bill should be cut by 5 percent. It has never been the IMF’s case to cut jobs of ordinary workers: that suggestion came from the Swazi Government itself.

The IMF has been very public in its advice to the Swaziland Government. In November 2011, for example, Joannes Mongardini, Head of the IMF Mission to Swaziland, said there were other ways to reduce the public expenditure bill in Swaziland without cutting the jobs or wages of ordinary workers.

Mongardini told the BBC World Service Focus on Africa programme the money could be saved from cutting spending on the army, the police and politicians’ allowances.

‘We are recommending for the government to reduce the wages bill by 5 percent. This is a relatively moderate amount compared to countries like Greece, Portugal and Ireland.’

Asked by the BBC about the position of public service workers who have complained about the possibility of retrenchments and wage cuts, Mongardini said, ‘We fully understand that this is a politically difficult decision to make.

‘Having said that, the government can find other ways to reduce the wage bill that will not require salary cuts. In particular, some of the largest increases in the wage bill in recent years are due to increased security forces and police personnel and they also are due to very generous allowances that the government has given to politicians and top civil servants.’

Hlangusemphi also misled the House of Assembly last week when he claimed that the IMF did not want to help Swaziland access funding to revive its economy. He said the IMF had prevented organisations such as the African Development Bank (AfDB) from giving loans to government. 

But Hlangusemphi knows (or should know) that the reason why Swaziland asked for the IMF’s assistance was so it could convince international financers that it could repay any loans it might receive. To do this the Swaziland Government drew up what it called a Fiscal Adjustment Roadmap (FAR) that set out a number of measures it would introduce to cut spending and increase income. But, the government failed to implement its own plan.

Because of this failure, the IMF said in April 2012 it could no longer support the government. It was up to the government to come up with a new plan that might help to save the economy.

The government has not done this. Earlier this month (November 2012) the IMF reported the government had failed to improve the economy in any appreciable way and could not pay its bills. This meant immediate public expenditure cuts were needed if the government was to meet the budget targets it set itself in February 2012.

In a statement following its visit, the IMF said the government would find it difficult to pay its bills this year, without increasing domestic borrowing. It also said that one reason for this was that the government had increased spending this year on security.

Since the IMF’s November statement, there have been a number of attempts from the Swazi Government to deflect attention away from its own failings and to claim the IMF did not know what it was talking about.

Immediately after the IMF reported, Finance Minister Majozi Sithole, described the IMF as biased, negative and unrealistic.  

This was after Mongardini had warned the government of bad times ahead, including a looming negative impact on sugar exports, a tourism sector that had declined by between eight and nine percent, low investor confidence, an envisaged decline in receipts from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and possible repatriation of money from local to South African banks.

See also

IMF REPORTS GOVT ECONOMIC FAILURES

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/imf-reports-govt-economic-failures.html

KING’S AIRPORT MIGHT NEVER OPEN

The building of the Sikhuphe International Airport might never be completed, a Swaziland Government minister has admitted.

Prince Hlangusemphi, Minister of Economic Planning and Development, told members of parliament that because of the financial meltdown in the kingdom, he could not guarantee that the project would be completed.

It has been estimated that Sikhuphe, dubbed King Mswati III’s vanity project, could cost US$1 billion by the time it is finished (if it ever is).

Hlangusemphi made his admission when questioned by MPs about the budget for Sikhuphe in the coming year.

The Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati, reported that his ministry’s portfolio committee demanded Hlangusemphi guaranteed that building work would not run over budget in the coming year.

The government dismayed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last year when it gave an additional E350 million (US$50 million) to supplement its budget, bringing the total spend for the year 2010/2011 to E706 million.

The Observer reported that despite government suspending other capital projects due to the financial crisis, Sikhuphe construction was not affected.

The newspaper reported, ‘MPs are worried that the ministry will go to parliament and ask for another supplementary budget and they feel that thing is going to worsen expenses for government while also affecting other projects.’

The government has budgeted E469 million for Sikhuphe in the coming year.

The Observer reported, ‘Minister Prince Hlangusemphi could not provide a straight forward response to the question but said he was only hoping that the project would be completed but he cannot guarantee that as it depends largely on availability of funds.’

Sikhuphe has been controversial because there is no need for a new airport in Swaziland. As I reported last month (February 2011), Hlangusemphi’s publicly stated justifications for the airport (that it would ease the congestion at OR Tambo Airport, Johannesburg; it would attract tourists to Swaziland and new business opportunities) are false.

See also

PROOF: KING’S AIRPORT POINTLESS

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2011/02/proof-kings-airport-pointless.html

SIKHUPHE AIRPORT IS TOO SMALL

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2011/02/sikhuphe-airport-is-too-small.html

PROOF: KING’S AIRPORT POINTLESS

Here’s proof – as if we needed any more – that the Swaziland Government never had a clue why it was necessary to build Sikhuphe Airport, at a possible cost of US$1 billion.

On Saturday (19 February 2011), Prince Hlangusemphi, Swaziland’s Economic Planning and Development Minister, was quoted in the Weekend Observer saying, Sikhuphe’s potential was enormous and it would attract aircraft and ease the ‘congestion suffered by OR [Tambo] International Airport in Johannesburg’.

Anyone who’s been paying attention over the past few years will know that OR Tambo underwent a multi-billion Rand development in preparation for the FIFA World Cup held in South Africa last year. Work on a new terminal continues and may be completed in 2012.

That means there is no congestion at OR Tambo – and therefore no potential business for Sikhuphe. And there never was.

So apart from the non-existent overspill from OR Tambo, where else is the business for Sikhuphe? Prince Hlangusemphi told the Weekend Observer that the airport would bring ‘large groups of tourists’. But where from?

The Swaziland Tourist Authority (STA) reported last week that most tourists to Swaziland are South African and Mozambican. They come by road, not air.

Eric Maseko , STA Chief Executive Officer, said his marketing department would intensify promoting Swaziland in South Africa and Mozambique in the coming year.

There is not a scrap of evidence that when Sikhuphe airport is open it will attract visitors from further afield. There is already an airport on Swaziland and if tourists want to fly into the kingdom, they can already do so. They don’t want to come in any numbers – and there’s no reason to suppose they will want to with a new airport.

Even the management of the airport recognises that at best 300,000 passengers per year will fly through Sikhuphe. That’s 822 on average per day – fewer than two ‘Jumbo Jets’ full of people.

The Prince also talked about Sikhuphe bringing ‘business and employment opportunities’. What are these exactly? Certainly, there have been opportunities for non-Swazi companies to make money on the construction of the airport and the roads running to it. But what about the ordinary Swazi? The best they have gotten is unskilled work. Once the airport opens there will be opportunities for jobs in baggage handling (but not many with so few planes coming and going), cleaning and general clerical work. Not much for a US$1 billion cost.

And remember, the billion is the cost of getting the thing built; it doesn’t include the day-to-day running costs to keep the underused airport open.

A total of another E469 million is being set aside for Sikhuphe in this year’s national budget – at a time when government department budgets are being slashed by 20 percent, on top of the 14 percent cut in the past year.

What a waste of money. E469 million is nearly the total amount (E489 million) the government intends to spend on tertiary level student scholarships and the cost of running the University of Swaziland (UNISWA) combined in the coming year. But Majozie Sithole, the Finance Minister, says Swaziland can no longer afford to award scholarships in future.

Of course it can’t, it’s wasted the money on Sikhuphe Airport, King Mswati III’s vanity project.

See also

KING’S AIRPORT: MORE MONEY WASTED

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2011/02/kings-airport-more-money-wasted.html

SIKHUPHE AIRPORT IS TOO SMALL

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2011/02/sikhuphe-airport-is-too-small.html