MBABANE – Prime Minister (PM) Russell Dlamini has revealed that the government is in the process of holding periodic press meetings that are open to public scrutiny as opposed to monthly meetings with editors.
This comes as a confirmation from the PM’s office stance of speculation given the year-long silence on his cabinet’ meeting with journalists, organised by the Eswatini Editors Forum (EEF). The PM was quoted as having spoken in the House of Assembly on Monday saying the last meeting – September 2024 – with editors to give updates on government business failed to serve its intentions.
A question had been posed by the House of Assembly Portfolio Committee for ICT chairperson/Ngudzeni Member of Parliament (MP) Charles Ndlovu who sought explanation from the PM on what had stopped him from engaging the public through the monthly breakfast meetings before the PM’s oral responses. Ndlovu also sought to know if it was the PM’s intention to resume the engagement.
The PM said some editors did not welcome the government’s gesture of such engagements with respect and professionalism. Instead, he said, the meeting turned into a mockery and degraded government affairs.
In the last editors’ meeting with the PM at the Mountain Inn, Mbabane, The Nation Magazine editor Bheki Makhubu had made a statement that the incumbent was the worst PM.
PM Dlamini said in the future there will be government-initiated press briefings that would be publicly open instead of maintaining the engagement with editors, aadding that they will continue to use other platforms as means of communicating national and government affairs to the public. He stated that the intentions of strengthening relations between the media and government and promoting press freedom were seemingly not reciprocated.
Mbabane East MP Welcome Dlamini also asked whether a postmortem was held or could still be held with the executive of the EEF and the Eswatini National Association of Journalists to resolve any issues.
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