The cut pay will create a clear frenemy between the government and its employees  

By Majok Arol Dhieu, South Sudan

Thursday, February 21, 2019 (PW) — I wish, if I were close to president Kiir to tell him that another hole is created behind him to fall in. Did I hear it very well over the SSBC Radio news that one day’s pay will be cut from the salaries of all civil servants to support implementation of the peace deal? My God! Is this a decision to deduct one day from civil servants is real or the government has find a way to blanketed the six months unpaid with this decision?

In simplest calculations, one day pay for someone getting one thousand five hundred South Sudanese pounds is fifty pounds. Then, five millions South Sudanese pounds will be raised by one hundred thousand civil servants, equivalent to eighteen thousand eight hundred sixty-seven dollars at the rate of two hundred sixty-five South Sudanese pounds per dollar.

Who is the cleanest person in the Ministry of Finance or in the committee to keep this money? Does this decision involved army? Is this a scenario of robbing Peter in order to pay Paul? The statement is somewhat ambiguous to be understood.

Who doesn’t know that South Sudan was bought at the dearest price? The SPLA gallant forces have fought the long war till South Sudan get independent which is now being enjoyed by few individuals who always come home at evening with pails full of misappropriated money.

The unspeakable hardship our forces experienced during war is not compensated yet and will never be compensated since we have evidenced the crooked activities of the past from the very people who are trusted to head institutions. It’s indeed unspeakable suffering for instance, such as SPLA troops’ peregrinations round Equatoria region where they often encountered very serious difficulties in subduing those earthen-and-mountains fortifications which sometime offered no opening to attack.

After the long war had fallen off, another war cloud gathered in the South Sudan before a decade is completed……the war of attrition between the rebels and government. Suffering after suffering!

After those said wars, then come in, “the salary delays, the salary deductions. These two Ds are competitors if not enemies”. The following days after the news, there was an extremely animated ruction on this decision though it seemed as a tempest in a teapot. In my book, it’s a disguise. The explanation of salary delays is becoming a hot potato and therefore, that is why a fundraising is created for the public servants to forget the past and stick to the present scenario.

Instead, the government have to create a budget for peace implementation from the collected revenues in the National Ministry of Finance or use the oil money and leave the civil servants to die while waiting their unpaid six or more months salaries. On other hand, president Kiir must urge the audit chamber to start their work from Ministry of Finance more importantly, at the directors of accounts offices. There are still ghost names at the national and state levels.

It’s these names that have made the government’s institutions to have been accused of being inefficient and hugely overstaffed. If checked, unless if the audit chamber is toothless or succumbed to the lure of great bribery scenario in the country, there must be budget here for peace implementation rather than cutting civil servants’ salaries.

In light of all the saying above, I wish, if I were the union’s chairman of the civil servants or representative, I would have demanded those who made this decision to pay all the six months unpaid salaries at once to the government’s employees and thereafter, urged the employees to pay back fifth of one month salary as their contribution to the government.

Deducting already delayed salary is unhealthy. It is as an amputation of the patient’s feet to free him/her from the wreckage since the salary will be given away in order to continue with the employment while going on bed hungry for the rest of another good five months. We are starving. Jesus!!!

Yes, it is said several times in various books, Wikipedia, dictionaries that peace is the concept of harmonious well-being and freedom from hostile aggression. There is no doubt that president Kiir had left no stone unturned in his search for peace by sending his delegation to negotiate even at the early days of the conflict with rebels.

This was because as I said earlier that South Sudanese have just emerged from another long war and they need a time of peace to compensate their very valuable time they have lost during war in which they would have achieved their personal’s plans.

But now, this decision has derailed the government the way it has made the citizens and the civil servants feel shivers running down their spine and were practically climbing the walls (suffer unpleasant feeling) during the announcement and in really sense, it will make no more progress rather than chasing our own tails.

Nevertheless, no-body including the writer is against peace because one of the most influential theories of peace is that, peace can be enjoyed fully and advanced to the posterity if the rebellion is crushed in the country only through the peace properly negotiated and implemented but not through brutally military force.

Yes, military force can be able to make it, but the disaster can indelibly seared into the most affected people’s memories to seek revenge in the future when they gained momentum.

It has to be a peace that must not disadvantaged the masses in one way or another. I hope, the rumpus that is going on currently about the salaries deduction in support for peace implementation is heard and the government should be reminded that its decision is likely to trigger another conflicts if not reversed. Where on earth that you dropped a conflict for another conflict?

 For public servants, they may accept on condition of not leaving the trail of destruction behind them though it is the hardest decision to bear with, but the decision as far as I know, is just the blocking up of question which was supposed to be ask by the civil servants that why the salaries are delayed.

To my sorrow, I cannot avoid coming to conclusion on this decision that the government is tiptoeing on the broken glasses because it is inadvisable to deduct the salaries from the civil servants who stayed for nearly six months without salaries for it will struck slightly discordant note.

The writer can be reached at email address majongaroldit@gmail.com

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