Swazi Observer

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MP MADALA WANTS RSTP AUDITED

By NOKUPHILA HAJI | 2024-11-14

MHLANGATANE Member of Parliament (MP) Madala Mhlanga says if the Royal Science and Technology Park (RSTP) is not audited, they will be forced to ask the ministry to institute their own forensic audit to confirm the newspaper reports about the parastatal.

He said this during the ministry of information, communication and technology’s second quarter budget performance debate yesterday.

Mhlanga claimed that there were a lot of wrongs at the RSTP.
He said he wanted to ascertain if the parastatal had been audited or not, adding that once they received audit reports, they would definitely work on them.

The MP said in the event they discovered that RSTP was not audited, they would ask the ministry to institute a forensic audit so as to confirm the newspaper reports.

He said they were hopeful that RSTP would generate money, however, it was now a drain. Mhlanga said they believed on the phrase which says ‘a new broom sweeps cleaner’.

revealed
“The wrongs happening at RSTP are often not revealed in the performance reports. At some point, a secondary Data Recovery Sites Loan Bill was passed, and we were confused as to when the primary recovery sites loan bill was requested,” he said.

Mhlanga said these were the things that they had to look into as MPs.

He said he was also hopeful that the minister would also stop the issue of middlemen when it comes to investors.

He said even if things were done correctly, they normally learnt of stories about people having influence on investors. “If it calls for the minister to remove the middlemen and go to Dubai to seek investors then so be it,” he said.

Hhukwini MP Alec Lushaba added that RSTP was supposed to make billions for Eswatini, but nothing had been done yet.

He asked the minister to make the entity effective, highlighting that they visited many African countries and discovered that it was possible to make it work.

In response, Minister of ICT Savannah Maziya said one of the things that the ministry had to do was what the Mhlangatane MP advised on. She said they had asked for a tender for an investigation into the RSTP in February, but was still not awarded.

The minister said this showed that there were challenges, adding that some of the things were outside their sphere of control and influence.

She said they were banking on other ministries, which were also busy. Maziya said there would be an investigation as it seemed that the parastatal had a lot of challenges.

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