Africa-Press – Eswatini. Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg has revealed that the process of selling government houses is underway and 10 to 15 houses will be up for sale in the next few weeks.
This he said when responding to submissions at the House of Senate where he was tabling the Supplementary Appropriation Bill.
He said the issue of selling government houses was starting to sound like a broken record as this was something the government had been pushing since 2018.
“It is unfortunate that I have been announcing the sale of government houses since my first budget speech, however, the processes in between have delayed this project. These processes include the valuation of the houses which had to be done on all the government houses and have taken quite some time, but I am happy to announce that soon about 10 or 15 houses will be on the market,” said the finance minister.
Meanwhile, the minister says the payment of utilities within the government departments is quite a thorny issue and to amend this, they were installing electricity meters within police quarters to ensure each officer is responsible for purchasing pre-paid electricity units.
“This will help curb the expenditure on utilities within the force. We also found that at the Correctional Services, there were leakages hence the high-water bill, but the Eswatini Water Services Corporation (EWSC) had become instrumental in fixing this. There is now a low water bill than before, so sometimes you find that these are things we can address without spending too much in terms of the budget,” said Rijkenberg.
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