BY MBONO MDLULI
MBABANE – Eswatini Christian Medical University (EMCU) has been given a subvention of E30 million for the financial year 2024/25.
This has come as good news to the Members of Parliament (MPs), who debated the Budget Speech delivered by Minister for Finance Neal Rijkenberg on Monday. One of the MPs who voiced happiness on the issue is Maseyisini MP Nokuthula Dlamini.
Dlamini praised Minister Rijkenberg for allocating such an amount to the institution. Dlamini stated that when this University was established in the country, the intention was to ensure that Eswatini students were able to learn medical subjects within the borders of their own country.
The MP said it was unfortunate that such a thing did not happen, even though the institution had been around for a long time now. She said even though there were challenges surrounding the existence of the University, she was happy that the subvention was given to the institution. She expressed hope that EMCU was going to be given the subvention in a consistent manner so that it could progress.
She made it clear that she expected that the institution would soon open the medical department so that the institution would start producing doctors and other medical practitioners. Meanwhile, Mbabane East MP Welcome Dlamini expressed concerns that the money for scholarships was not increased this year.
He wanted to know why such a thing happened. He stated that last year, 1 000 scholarships were added and wanted to know what was going to happen this year. In response, Minister Rijkenberg said it was true that money for scholarships was not added. He mentioned that last year, scholarship allocations were increased from E360 million to E670 million, hence scholarships were able to be added. Rijkenberg further mentioned that it was difficult to allocate money to social services programmes when economic growth of the country was slow. He advised that it was important for the country to start by focusing on how the economy was grown so that it could be able to pay for the much needed social services like scholarships, elderly and disability grants and other social s
