George Sanzila

Kingdom of Eswatini members of parliament, Marwick Khumalo and Lorraine Xhumalo who are led by the speaker, Petros Mavimbela are on a two-day benchmarking visit to the Namibian parliament. 

The visit is intended to share practices between the two legislatures to improve performance.

Khumalo, who chairs the committee on standing orders and the committee on finance, noted that Eswatini parliament is reviewing its standing orders.

Speaker of the National Assembly, Peter Katjavivi noted during a courtesy call by the Eswatini lawmakers that exchange visits were imperative to improve the capacity of both members of parliament and staff. He informed the MPs that the Namibian parliament was also in the process of reviewing both its internal structure and its standing rules and orders in its quest to improve performance. 

“We have been reviewing our structures through our adopted agenda for change strategy in order to optimally provide the necessary parliamentary services. Currently, we have a limited number of researchers and we are still subjected to the Public Service Commission and this has to change.  We have started  with small steps of trying to delink parliament from the commission. We have also established a budget committee to help parliament have adequate financial resources needed for its operations. We are also currently revising our standing rules and orders. These are experiences we can share and see how best we can learn from each other,” said Katjavivi.

The MPs further met their counterparts in the committee on public accounts.