By Bahle Gama
Minister of ICT Savannah Maziya says she was perplexed by the Eswatini government using Gmail to send official communications.
She said before she knew it, she would have treated such an email like a 419 and would not take it seriously because it is impossible that a whole government would be using such a system.
In responding to concerns raised by Members of Parliament in this regard, Minister Maziya said the Ministry is in the process of creating appropriate government emails.
This is not the first time this concern has arisen as many have expressed their concern over government information and documents being sent using a Gmail account.
The concern was based on what would happen when an employee retired or left a government entity and, in the process, still used the same email address for other uses exposing the government to a lot of danger and threats.
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Some emaSwati also felt that Gmail did not show professionalism for the government. In August 2023, Auditor General (AG) Timothy Matsebula reported that his email had been hacked by unknown people.
The AG reported this to the Ministry of Finance and the Royal Eswatini Police Services (REPS) and stated that he suspected that the people behind this were linked to the investigation into the theft of medical drugs at local health facilities.
He said he was aware that these people were strongly against the probe and further disclosed that he was using it to store valuable government information, “and clearly, the perpetrators of the hacking were fishing for information.
Matsebula said he was alerted of the hacking by a former employee at his office based in South Africa. The colleague was receiving emails he never sent using his email and was suspected of hacking.
Other calls came from colleagues from his office informing him of the same and it was discovered that the people behind the hacking of his account were circulating emails using his name with the hope of getting information.
The AG also discovered that he was being impersonated in that there had been several accounts opened using his name to confuse people.
