By Zweli Martin Dlamini

When the Police Executive Command increased their salaries through fraudulent means in 2014, they falsely convinced King Mswati that they were benchmarking with the Southern African Development Community(SADC).

But here in eSwatini some junior police officers are paid less than twelve thousand Rands(R12,000.00) far lower than their colleagues in the region,and the money is systematically deducted through the high taxes, among others.

Money-lending companies allegedly linked to Mswati impose penalties on loans just to grab everything from the pockets of the police officers. 

It is our duty as the independent media to expose this economic injustice against the police officers regardless of their alleged atrocities which some of them, now regret.

The solution here is to increase the salaries for the junior officers to meet the average of South African police officers because we share the same currency value.

Eswatini is rich and can afford to pay this amount, this could be done by reducing royal expenditure.

But it must not end with police officers, Government must increase salaries for all civil servants including teachers, soldiers,correctional officers, nurses and fire fighters among others.

The recently announced 3% was just Imbasha, this Government must be forced to release our taxes to the rightful people.

Civil servants are providing services to the public and we want our money to pay them decent salaries so that businesses can benefit through the increase in buying power.

It should be noted that if police officers are broke, this means even informal traders, car dealers, filling stations and supermarkets are not making money because the whole population is broke.

Therefore, when we advocate and pressurize Government to increase salaries for junior police officers, we are doing that in principle and in the interest of the whole population because these police officers will spend that money with their families and support local businesses.

Now the whole country is broke because Government is refusing to release the money through decent salaries.

We cannot say junior police officers must not benefit from Government because they brutalized people, we must address and resolve that issue separately and objectively.

But the current tension within the security forces perpetrated by Mswati’s government refusal to increase salaries suggests that this regime has no alternative, it must increase the salaries for the security officers or face being overthrown.