Swaziland Financial Crisis Forces Schools to Close

MBABANE,
15 September 2011 (IRIN) – The vast majority of Swaziland’s primary and
secondary public schools have not opened for the new term, after the
government failed to settle the outstanding education fees of US$10.8
million for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC).

About 200,000 children, or nearly one fifth of the country’s 1.1 million
people, are classified as orphaned or vulnerable. Swaziland has the world’s
highest prevalence of HIV – 26.1 percent. One in four Swazis aged 15-49 is
HIV-positive and 70 percent of people live below the poverty line.

The government of King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute
monarch, is legally bound to pay OVC fees, which have been outstanding
since January 2011.

“Last week government assured us that when schools opened for the
third term, [13 September] money for the outstanding fees would be paid for
the OVC. This did not happen. The schools have no money to operate,”
Sibongile Mazibuko, president of the country’s largest teachers’ union, the
Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT), told local media.

In a mobile phone text message to about 9,000 union members on 13
September, SNAT said: “Since government has failed to deposit money
for OVCs as per agreement, teachers should return and remain at home until
[we] meet Thursday [15 September] for a protest march.”

The
Ministry of Education told IRIN the teachers’ union did not have the
authority to close schools, and the ministry has ordered children to attend
school through broadcasts on government radio stations.

Swaziland’s deepening economic crisis saw neighbouring South Africa
recently agree to a R2.4 billion (US$370 million) loan to prevent an
economic meltdown, after international financial institutions, including
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), declined to bail out Swaziland for,
among other reasons, its failure to reduce its public sector wage bill,
which is seen as far too large for the country’s size. South Africa has not
yet paid
the loan.

“Cash flow
problem”
The Swazi government says the failure to pay OVC school fees is a
“cash flow problem” and has given assurances that education and
health needs would be financed.

A headmaster of a school in
central Manzini region, who declined to be identified, told IRIN:
“They [OVC] are the innocent ones in all this. The first and second
graders were promised that their fees would be paid by government, as per
the national constitution. The OVC in higher grades are so many now, and
schools cannot operate without government assistance paying their fees. We
are at our wits end. The children are absolutely devastated. It is painful
to educationalists and it’s a tragedy for the children,” he said.

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