Civil servants face retrenchment

Swaziland’s government plans to retrench about 5,000 temporary civil servants at the end of this month in an ongoing programme by the tiny kingdom to reduce its budget deficit, trade union sources told IRIN on Tuesday. Quinton Dlamini, the general secretary of Swaziland National Association of Civil Servants (SNACS) said many of the workers who face retrenchment were unskilled. “The chances of these workers getting any alternative employment in the country are almost nil as no new investment has come into the country between 1991 and 1999,” Dlamini said. Dlamini said the government, which employs nearly 29,000 civil servants, had reneged on an earlier agreement with SNACS to grant permanent status to the temporary workers. He said the majority of the workers had been employed in the civil service for more than 10 years, although they had been classified as temporary. Swaziland’s unemployment rate, according to government figures, currently stands at 45 percent of the estimated one million people. The country’s formal sector employment averaged zero growth per annum between 1991 and 1999 due to a lack of investment.