UNMISS committed to resolve national staff’s demands Gurtong.net Juba, 15/8/2012 – United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) Spokesperson Kouider Zerrouk has reiterated the commitment of the mission to help resolve the demands by the national staff. The South Sudanese Nationals gather at the UNDP offices on Monday demanding better terms of employment. “The leadership of UNMISS and the Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG) have been meeting regularly with the national staff since the beginning over this year and other issues,” said Zerouk. “Our national colleagues have a meeting tomorrow with the SRSG and the leadership of the mission. We have been actively engaged with the National Staff Association and we have alerted the UN headquarters about this issue,” he added. Zerouk admitted the financial difficulties the national staffs are facing. “The economic situation generally has impacted very hard on South Sudanese especially our national colleagues. It is important we do the utmost for our national colleagues to overcome this situation,” said Zerouk. “Most of our colleagues have their families outside South Sudan; basically in Uganda or Kenya”. The spokesperson was responding to Monday’s peaceful procession by the South Sudanese employees of UNMISS and other UN agencies against what they called mistreatment in terms of salary payment between national and the international staff. The South Sudanese employees have been receiving their salaries in SDG and SSP since 2009 but with the economic hardships facing the new nation, hard currencies became scarce and yet most of the commodities in the new nation are imported. This led to the demand for national staff to be paid in dollars. Hundreds of the staff in Juba and other states decided not to work and gave the UN head office 48 hours to sort out their demands. In a petition letter addressed to the SRSG Ms. Hilda F. Johnson, the national staff also accused their international supervisors of mistreatment and torture. According to the protesters, all project donations including salaries are being sent to the country in dollars only to the benefit of the foreign staff as the nationals are paid in South Sudan Pounds which has lost value greatly against other currencies of late. “We have been requesting the United Nations in different levels that we have issues that we want them to address but all the organizations’ administrations have failed to do what we have been requesting,” said Mal Makerr, one of the representatives of the national staff. The UN Radio Miraya could only play music and broadcast news for much of the day as most of the employees were also affected during the protest. The different UN organizations have also been accused of failing to implement an order from the Ministry of Labour and Public Service that called for the termination of contracts of all foreigners working as nationals in order to create room for the real qualified South Sudanese. The Ministry’s Undersecretary Helen Achiro last week told Gurtong that many organizations and foreign companies have failed to execute the order and warned of tough action against such organizations.
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