Jane Mlambo| Finance minister Mthuli Ncube could have danced to President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s moves to stop another military coup after allocating more than $1 billion to the security sector in his 2018 budget.

His argument is that soldiers are not being well fed and now having two meals a day instead of three.

According to the 2018 budget, Ncube allocated $546,9 million to the Defence ministry and $517,8 million to the Home Affairs ministry, bringing the combined allocation to security apparatus to slightly over $1 billion.

In an interview with NewsDay on the sidelines of a post-budget Press briefing, Ncube said he had allocated a non-wage linked budget of $160 million and $86,2 million to the Defence and Home Affairs ministries, respectively, to cater for maintenance of equipment, facilities, training and development.

“This allocation is small; we have a situation where we have our military personnel at times having two meals per day instead of three; our police officers failing to attend to crime scenes because they do not have transport and other equipment to use. So we need to capacitate them,” Ncube said.