By Wandile Dludlu.
Africa-Press – Eswatini. Last week Ministry of Commerce indicated an intention to invoke the bread price increase process, which if successful will leave us with bread price seven cents more expensive.
We understand this to be a process in which pull and push factors of costs in the baking of bread usually inform a new price, off course appreciating the fact that whilst bread has become our daily bread as well as an essential for the diet for almost most households.
Unfortunately it remains in the hands of private business individuals who are driven by market goals of making profit than service to the Nation.
Government under normal circumstances is supposed to be an equalizer of interests based on the conflicting interests between us as consumers and/or citizens against bread makers often times business gurus who want maximum profit.
In our situation His Majesty’s Government is unapologetically pro-business through not only policy biases but structural neglect in which poor consumers are left completely in the hands of brutal market players.
In simple terms, adding seven percent(7%) increase in bread may look insignificant to a person like an Member of Parliament(MP) whose salary is about to be increased by almost twent thousand from forty nine thousand Rands(R49,000.00) to sixty-nine(R69,000.00), whereas to a civil servant Category A and B who emerged with absolutely nothing as government said there are already paid too much, mind you category A and B constitute majority of ordinary civil servants.
The contradiction here is that both the MP and the ordinary civil servant will get into same shop to buy same bread to sustain his or her family as life will command from both.
May God one day bless us with sufficient wisdom and courage to learn one thing “Take Ourselves Seriously” we are the ones who have allowed government and Royalty to nudge the insatiable appetite for profit at our expense, we are the ones who egg walk around when we are supposed to put on a consumer pushback against endless price increase even upon basic services and products like bread, water electricity and data as well as internet.
In this day an age these things have become necessity not luxuries, the net effect of the corrosive costs of these recurrent expenses depletes our disposable income leaving us completely flat-footed interms of economic development even those who are lucky to be employed in the predominantly informal economy today.
We spent everything just to sustain ourselves good enough for tomorrow’s energy for another day and or month salary.
It has become common for Swazis to work their heart out ,but still struggle to afford a decent house and or home for their children, decent education for their children, quality public healthcare for their children and families.
In fact they live through loan sharks many of whom Directors are Members of Parliament, royalty and such like elites who make the policies and laws that further drowns the majority of workers and ordinary citizens who pays their heavenly lifestyle through unfavorable economic structural construct like King’s Office, Parliament and such like structures that design, manage and proliferate our poverty daily through our daily bread Amen!
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