Africa-Press – Eswatini. ENPF says the purchase of Imbube Marathon items forms a very minute percentage of 0.075 per cent of the fund’s annual procurement.
This is according to ENPF Senior Marketing and Communications Officer Mlungisi Dlamini, who said all other procurement activities, making up more than 99 per cent, were sourced locally in an effort to support local industries. He added that the fund was always concerned about saving money for purposes of maximising members’ funds. Dlamini said this when responding to a questionnaire, where he was asked why ENPF decided to purchase the Imbube Marathon T-shirts overseas, yet there were local companies which manufactured the product. It was highlighted in the questionnaire that some stakeholders believed that it was expensive to buy the T-shirts overseas as there were shipping costs involved, among many others.
Procuring
In response, he said procuring the T-shirts overseas proved far cheaper than sourcing them locally. He said in the past, the fund procured the marathon’s T-shirts from local suppliers.
“However, when it sought to compare the prices of similar quality material with those produced locally, it was found that the prices from China were about a third of the local prices,” Dlamini said. He also highlighted that one of the fund’s strategic intents was cost containment. He added that the main purpose of cost containment was to maximise the annual interest that was paid to members’ accounts to grow their benefits. Again, the fund was asked why it failed to support the textile workers who pumped in money to the organisation and also went against government’s call of reviving the economy by circulating money locally. In his response, Dlamini said the fund had always supported government’s call of reviving the economy and as such, it had a number of projects whose procurement were sourced locally, even at higher costs than the prices of foreign countries’ market. “The procurement for the Imbube Marathon T-shirts is only one initiative whereby the cost differences were so vast that it made sense that the items be procured outside the country,” he said.
Reaction
Again, the fund was informed that some textile workers were of the view that ENPF had let them down because they used to be proud to see emaSwati and high-ranking government officials wearing T-shirts made by them. In reaction to this, Dlamini said all items, except the marathon’s T-shirts, were sourced locally in an effort to support local industries, particularly small-medium enterprises (SMEs). He added that the fund had a responsibility to its members, including textile workers, to make the best cost-effective decisions to ensure that the highest possible interest was paid to members at the end of the financial year. Moreover, the fund was informed that the textile industry was from prolonged unpaid layoffs because the sector was running short of orders due to various factors and at the moment, its business was affected by load-shedding and recent floods in South Africa, which means it (industry) needed every single job they could get in order to survive and keep the 22 000 emaSwati employed. It was asked if it considered the interest of the local economy and workers (its members) when making the decision to buy the T-shirts from China.
In response, Dlamini said the purchase of Imbube Marathon items formed a very minute percentage of 0.075 per cent of the fund’s annual procurement and that other purchases, amounting to more than 99 per cent, were sourced locally in an effort to support local industries.
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