In the midst of the ever escalating costs of basic necessities of life, Government must consider increasing salaries for civil servants to enhance buying power.
As the situation stands, civil servants including security officers are financially struggling despite being employed by Government.
In the security forces, King Mswati must do a restructuring and pay junior officers a salary of at least twenty thousand Rands (R20,000.00) per month.
It should be noted that currently, the Royal eSwatini Police has more than ten(10) Deputy Commissioners and over twenty(20)Assistant Commissioners, these senior police officers take home over R30million per year as salaries for doing absolutely nothing.
When Government introduced a salary adjustment program and set aside a budget for junior police officers worth millions on or around 2014, the Police Executive Command held a meeting to strategize on how they could loot the money.
Mswati was then convinced to approve a benchmark of police senior positions with the Southern African Development Community(SADC) and this saw the promotion of more than thirty (30)senior police officers who have collectively benefited over R200 million since the introduction of the structure in 2014.
As mentioned, each year, these senior police officers collectively benefit over R30million and this money has escalated to over R 200 million since the introduction of the structure.
Now, despite looting the millions meant to increase salaries for junior police officers in 2014 by systematically introducing ‘useless’ Deputy Commissioner positions and promoting the then Police Commissioner to National Commissioner, the Executive Command now wants to award junior police officers only 3% and award themselves 22%.
The 3% suggests that police officers who earn around ten thousand Rands (R10,000.00) will only receive a three hundred Rands(R300) salary increment and that money might be swallowed by tax and or bank charges.
On the other hand, senior police officers who earn around fifty thousand Rands (R50,000.00) will receive around 22% and this amounts to eleven thousand(R11,000.00) per month.
It is now clear that money is sufficient in the country to sustain the people including civil servants, but the powerful and politically connected are misappropriating it for their own benefit.
It’s surprising that when the Police Executive Command looted the money through useless posts, they claimed this was in line with SADC standards.
But if eSwatini is now benchmarking with SADC when paying salaries why do we see civil servants including security officers receiving low salaries far below the amount paid by South Africa?.
Civil servants must be paid at least R20,000.00 as a minimum wage so that they can survive.
King Mswati.