Africa-Press – Eswatini. Analysing the progression of this year’s People’s Parliament, I have witnessed a nation rooted in its culture. A nation that refuses to be assimilated into foreign ways of life, a nation endeavouring to solve its problems and identify opportunities within the confines of its cultural realm. A nation balancing problems and opportunities of modernity through conduits tested in time. Sibaya should culminate in solutions to the problems of the people and we need to be constantly appraised on progress.
Themes from Sibaya
Paramount to the people, as one analyses Sibaya, are jobs; people need jobs and we need practical solutions to addressing the problems of unemployment. This theme emerged throughout Sibaya, the people have spoken and we need a government that will create the jobs. The problem of corruption is a cancer that we need to endeavour to root out as a nation. One speaker captured the problem adequately; rats started with a single tablet, then they ate the whole box, now they have taken the whole truck. Sadly, it would seem that the nation has normalised this problem, through the lack of adequate punitive measures. The people have asked and they need an answer to this question; ‘why move a person suspected of corruption from one ministry to the next’? The law needs to bite, the nation is losing a lot of money through corruption and certain people are enriching themselves while the nation suffers. I am going to rest here today on the themes of Sibaya, I will confine myself to the ones that are urgent to the people and suggest possible solutions to the problem.
Short-term economic solutions
It is imperative that we enact policies that will help the country overcome its problems, particularly unemployment. I suggest that the next Parliament enacts implementation modalities that will ensure that people benefit from the capital expenditure for public works programmes. Small local roads construction and rehabilitation programmes need to be done by local companies. We can empower small local companies through the public purse and some will grow and be sustainable. Big companies can focus on huge national public works programmes. Also, we can expand local sourcing for the school feeding programme, this will create a formal market for agriculture and would act as an incentive for local farmers to utilise land that is lying fallow.
Medium-term solutions
Mining and agriculture are medium-term potential solutions that we need to exploit as a country. Agriculture, ideally, should be a low hanging fruit ready for reaping, however, we need to be strategic by addressing supply side constraints and improve value addition. It is imperative that we find ways to contain input costs to lower the costs of entry into agricultural markets. Also, there is need to capacitate our farmers to be market ready; this requires heavy investments in tunnel farming or net farming, cold room storage, proper packaging houses and proper amenities for fair trade.
Subsistence agriculture is a low hanging fruit, however, proper mechanised farming with proper margins for poverty alleviation requires structured and adequate financial support for farmers. Farming is an expensive endeavour, therefore, we need to adequately support our farmers. Mining is an area that the nation has not yet explored, however, we need to be structured as we embark on extracting the mineral wealth of the country. We have kept our minerals in the ground for so long, and we need to keep them buried and only extract if beneficiation will occur in the country. At the present moment we can exploit our relative peace and stability to attract copper producers into the country, and other mineral producers who need a relatively stable environment for production. There is a huge gap, especially in copper in the region, we can fill that niche through offering a safe haven for copper recyclers.
Long-term solutions
An overhaul of the education system is required, the system is out-dated. I am teaching a syllabus that was taught to me 17 years ago, and the people before me taught the same syllabus. We need to align our system with current trends. An overhaul of the system requires the enactment of a flexible system which will mould with the times. We also need to fast track enacting the backbone infrastructure for ICT in the country, we need to catch up with the information age. We also need to enect laws that will enable funding for ICT ideas that cannot be utilised as collateral, the banking system also needs to move with the times, we are in an era of ideas not heavy construction hardware which can be collateral.
In closing
As the nation gathers to mull over the issues facing the country, it is imperative that we structure our engagements so that we are able to follow up and track progress over the next five years. I hope that the Sibaya secretariat will be able to share with the nation a report, and this can be given to the incoming Cabinet as terms of reference. We need the nation to be consistently appraised on progress made on the problems they have raised.
Source: TIMES
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