Philani Maswati Organisation Chairman Lutfo Dlamini has denied that he allowed people of Asian origin into the country during his tenure as minister.
Dlamini said to prove that, there was no Asian shop owner at his constituency Ndzingeni while he was still a Member of Parliament or as a minister. Dlamini was the then Minister of Enterprise and Employment.
Dlamini refuted this during the second instalment of the Eswatini Observer’s podcast which is hosted by the acting Managing Editor Mbongeni Mbingo.
Mbingo had asked Dlamini to give insight to the saying that ‘ngulelo Liswati linelindiya lalo’ loosely translated to mean each and every Liswati had an Asian business partner.
Dlamini said he was surprised how this story or allegations were started, but stated that when one is in the limelight or a politician a lot of things are said about that person.
He said the issue of the influx of Asians was so big that even a Parliament select committee was chosen to investigate it.
“I was called by that commission and I appeared before them and told them I had no idea how these people had come to the country especially since we were calling proper investors to construct factories and not the many shops that have mushroomed all over the country,” he said.
He said a bulk of the investors came from the Middle East with particular focus on Taiwan.
He said he was happy they had managed to achieve this as evidenced by the thousands of Emaswati who are employed at Matsapha Industrial sites and Nhlangano.
He said he highly suspected that it was the officers at Home Affairs who issued the documents to a majority of the Asian nationals.
“You cannot even ask them to show proof that they are here legally or not because they can simply produce a local passport that even you do not have,” he said to Mbingo.
Dlamini said he worked very hard with his team to bring proper investors especially since the king had been specific that he wanted no less than two factories per year.
He said even if anyone can ask the Asian nationals none of them would say they ‘were brought by Lutfo’ because his hands were clean.
He said he was proud that they were able to train some of the investors on labour laws and unions because in the beginning there was a lot of conflicts between local workers and their bosses.
He said he remembered that one time Zheng Yong factory was burnt by some of the workers because there were conflicts.
“However, once we sat everyone down all that was fixed and again I am very happy with some of the investments we were able to bring,” he said.
