The elderly in Swaziland have not been paid pensions
because the government does not have the money.
This was revealed when about 4,000 people became
eligible for the pensions (known as elderly grants) when they reached the age
of 60 and many were turned away when they went to collect them.
Meanwhile, King Mswati III has had a budget increase
that would pay for the new pensions ten times over.
A
media report in Swaziland estimated that the government
needed about an extra E20 million (US$1.4 million) to pay for the new
pensioners and another E40 million to meet a shortfall to pay the existing
66,000 people already receiving the pensions.
The Government said it had no budget to pay the new
pensions. It has a budget of E282 million for the elderly, but with the reviewed
monthly grant, rising from E220 to E400 has meant that this budget became
insufficient, the Observer
on Saturday reported (18 November 2017).
The Deputy Prime Minister Paul Dlamini told the House of
Assembly there was no money to pay the grants. The Times of Swaziland, the only
independent daily newspaper in the kingdom, reported, ‘Dlamini said these new
elderly had not been budgeted for by government nor was an allocation made by
Parliament.’
The newspaper added, ‘He said government was not
reneging on its commitment to support the welfare of the elderly, but was
resource constrained.’
Although the government did not provide sufficiently
for the elderly in its 2017 budget it did increase spending on the Swaziland
Royal Household by E200 million (US$14 million) to E1.3 billion. King Mswati
III rules Swaziland as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.
An independent monthly magazine in the kingdom the Nation
reported (April 2017), ‘While the
entire budget for King Mswati and the royal household continues to grow in
hundreds of millions of emalangeni every year, social grants for elderly and
the physically challenged showed a very insignificant increase.’
Seven in ten of the
King’s 1.3 million subjects have incomes of less than US$2 per day.
The Nation
reported the budget increase as ‘mouth-watering’. It said elderly grants had a
‘paltry’ increase. The Finance Minister Martin Dlamini announced in his
February budget the grant would rise from E240 to E400 per month.
The Nation
reported, ‘Even health institutions have seen cuts to their budget allocations
this year while the army’s allocation continues to rise unabated even though
the country is at peace. Money for agriculture has also been cut, despite that
the country has just come out a devastating drought
and farmers need help to find their feet.’
King Mswati has been criticised outside Swaziland for
his lavish spending. He has 13 palaces, fleets of BMW and Mercedes cars and at
least one Rolls-Royce. He is to receive a second private jet aircraft next
year.
In the budget announced in February 2017, nearly
E2.7 billion (US$216 million) was allocated to the kingdom’s security forces
that comprise the Umbutfo Swaziland Defence Force (USDF), Royal Swaziland
Police Service (RSPS) and His Majesty’s Correctional Services (HMCS).
This is more than the E2.2bn allocated to health in the coming financial
year and E585 million more than allocated to security in 2016-2017.
Security now takes up 12.4 percent of Swaziland’s total budget of
E21.7bn ($US1.66 bn), up 11 percent on last year.
In the calendar year 2014, Swaziland’s military
spending was estimated to be US$80.6 million; about the equivalent of US$62 for
every person in the kingdom.
See also
SWAZI
KING’S BUDGET INCREASES US$14 MILLION
SWAZILAND:
MASSIVE ‘SECURITY’ SPENDING
SWAZI
MPs REJECT NATIONAL BUDGET
BUDGET
NEGLECTS ELDERLY, FAVOURS PM
ELDERLY
STAY POOR AS KING GETS MORE
ELDERLY
UNPAID AS CASH GOES TO SOCCER
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