Aid Agencies ARE NOT Cheating Donors in the Name of South Sudan: A Response to Holy Crook
4 min readBy Jenny, an Aid Worker
While your article makes many good points I have a major issue with some of your comments. I work in Rumbek, South Sudan in a small NGO. All money goes to projects, we don’t even purchase vehicles because we would rather have the money go into our projects. Additionally I work for free. I do not have a paycheck, and I sleep outside in a tent on the compound grounds so that money is not spent in a room, and can further go to projects. While I cannot comment on Juba as I have not worked there, I have a particular issue with your comment:
“They do little or nothing at all to upgrade the local workforce. The managers hire foreign nationals at will. Some come from as far as Madagascar and Sierra Leone. Don’t even mention Kenyans and Ugandans because they’re locals nowadays.”
It is biased to suggest that the local workforce has not been developed only due to aid agencies’ refusal to hire them, without looking at why aid agencies do not hire them. You must look internally as well. While I respect the Dinka very much as people, and have many friends here, the culturally ingrained attitudes towards work are preventing the development of a strong local workforce. The local people cannot be fired, and take advantage of that fact. Dinka employees, as I have seen, will not come to work for days, or come late all the time, or sit and sleep during their work hours. If you try and fire a local staff, you face paying out years of pay and benefits. Money that could go to aiding other here, but that person rather take it for themselves. The courts will always go in their favor and force this. The only way to get out of it, is to get out of the country. You also risk the fired person and their friends coming to your compound with guns to commit an acceptable in their minds ‘revenge killing’ on you. This has happened here. There are individuals that are worse than others.. But even the best of local staff (ex. Our one local staff) will weasel their way out of work, avoid tasks, make excuses.
And, there’s nothing you as an employer to do once you hire them. It’s a culturally ingrained trait that must be changed before focus can be placed on hiring local staff as a workforce by international agencies. Or, the agencies’ risk security, time, and money that could be better spent towards projects to help the country. There is a large failure in agencies lack of recognition to implement programs specific to changing these cultural attitudes towards work, and stopping laws about paying out unreasonable sums if you fire someone. However, if such programs were created it would still take generations to fully adjust the culture; as it does with any adjustment of deeply engrained values (i.e Women’s rights, gender roles).
Additionally, South Sudan’s dollar is extremely high. Do you wonder why there are so many Kenyans and Ugandans here to work, in a new and volatile country, when their own are more developed and safer? It is because they cannot find jobs in their own countries. As education increases but the economy fail to keep up, they are left jobless or with such low pay they cannot support their families. They leave their home for years at a time in an insecure environment, to achieve better pay to send home. They do this without the same high level security features as western or European international employees. If there was an evacuation, the UN would airlift out the westerners and Europeans first; leaving behind the other African support staff. It is not that they are more deserving of the positions than South Sudanese, however they do not come with the same risks and low performance. Additionally, it is ignorant to put down these groups for their decisions to come to South Sudan to work. They come due to their own constraints and need to support themselves and their families, and do it at great risk. They cannot be put down for this.
Overall, the issue of the local workforce is not an issue of international agencies alone. It is broader, with roots in culture and economies in the East African region. To attempt to impose blame without a full analysis of the underlying reasons for why South Sudanese is hired less often, and why Africans from surrounding countries are entering the workforce in South Sudan, is irresponsible. The need to upgrade and develop the local workforce is apparent and should be a major topic in discussions regarding the development of South Sudan, but more analysis must be done on the roots of the issue than simply placing blame on international agencies.
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