By Zweli Martin Dlamini
Africa-Press – Eswatini. In this country, when entering some Government Offices it’s like you entering “lihhoko letingulube”, the failure by the Ministry of Public Works and Transport to maintain public roads is actually a distant crisis.
Indeed, the condition of the Government Offices and houses ‘allocated’ to civil servants tells the whole story, there’s a serious crisis in this country and it’s just that a majority of emaSwati grew-up in poverty and based on their childhood experience, they tend to embrace hardship as part of their daily lives.
But failure by the Government to maintain public roads automatically restricts the citizens’ progress in life, you cannot buy a Mercedes, BMW and other vehicles requiring tarred roads when residing in some parts of the country.
But apart from that, failure by the Government to maintain roads means, investors won’t establish businesses and create jobs because the movement of goods from one place to another, is restricted by the non-availability of public infrastructure.
The recent tour of damaged roads in the Hhohho Region by Prime Minister Russell Mmiso Dlamini who was accompanied by Public Works Minister Chief Ndlaluhlaza Ndwandwe was just a stupid publicity stunt but in political terms it’s known as “playing to the public gallery”.
In context, “playing to the public gallery” means acting in an exaggerated or theatrical manner to win popularity, approval or applause from an audience, rather than acting with sincerity, integrity, or addressing the substance of a matter.
It often implies prioritizing popular appeal over doing what is right, touring the damaged roads was a mere political project by the PM Russell Mmiso Dlamini administration to give the people false hope.
The R120million announced by the PM as a budget allocation to fix the damaged roads was just a drop in the ocean, the damage caused by the recent floods across the country, cannot be fixed with that amount of money.
Government will just fix a few roads, post pictures on social media and then, claim to have resolved the problem, it’s a mere publicity stunt seeking to deceive the people.
We have been reporting about the costs of roads, there’s no way R120million could fix roads and the damaged bridges across the country, even R2billion cannot be enough.
But we will wait for the Ministry of Public Works and Transport to post pictures of graders fixing a few roads and then, the Tinkhundla regime will claim to be working for emaSwati.
In this era of technology where the dissemination of information has become convenient, emaSwati will just tell the independent media if roads in their communities have been fixed.
