MBABANE: King Mswati’s Office allegedly introduced a policy seeking to hold passports for members of the military and police service after some of the security officers used the opportunity of traveling with the Monarch to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly and secured well-paying care giving and other well-paying jobs in the United States of America (USA).
It has been disclosed that, the security officers would use their diplomatic passports to network in the Unites States and secure jobs “while the King is busy addressing the UN General Assembly or holding investment meetings” and subsequently disappear only to later send resignation letters back home.
Reached for comments by this Swaziland News this week, King Mswati’s Spokesperson Percy Simelane confirmed that, some security officers providing security to His Majesty the King, resigned after securing jobs in the US however, he denied that they just disappeared while traveling with the King.
“The information I have suggests that every bodyguard who was on duty when the King travelled to the USA for the United Nations General Assembly last year returned home. There are, however military officers that from time to time resign from the Army and go abroad for greener pastures,” said the King Spokesperson.
When asked about the alleged grabbing of the diplomatic passports to prevent royal guards from dumping the King when traveling with him abroad, the King’s Spokesperson said, it’s not grabbing but a formal handover of the passports after resignation.
“All of them start their journey from Eswatini after resigning. Since the passports (service passports) that the King’s bodyguard travel on are acquired specifically for official duties, they are kept by the Office and handed over to the officers on duty when there is external travel. When an officer resigns, he ceases to be aligible to travel on the service passports issued in his name. He has to apply for his own, an ordinary international passport. Every passport issued to an individual to travel on, remains the property of the State which has a responsibility to manage it even if it is the custody of the holder to whom it was issued,” he said.
Eswatini has about 70% of the population living below the poverty line, even civil servants are affected by the poverty situation due to low salaries and large number of dependents.
The United States care-giving and other similar jobs are reportedly paying up to one hundred thousand Rands (R100,000.00) per-month, dozens have migrated to the United States, Ireland and other European countries for greener pastures.
King Mswati (pic: UN).