MOGADISHU (December 26): Two-thirds of the 5,000 Somali Federal Government employees are not reporting for work, despite drawing their salaries paid by the World Bank, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has admitted.
Addressing Government officials at the Presidential Mosque, Mr Mohamud (pictured) said these ‘ghost’ Public Servants were resulting in the loss of millions of US dollars provided by international partners — including funds from the United States and United Kingdom – to support Somalia State-building.
“There are more than 5,000 Public Servants registered in our biometric system, but only 1,500 of them report for work every day. Where are the rest? They do not exist or they do not live in the country,” Mr Mohamud said.
“However, they are still paid. They are thieves and their superiors who accepted this scheme are also thieves. They are simply stealing public money.”
In 2014, the World Bank reengaged in Somalia for the first time in 23 years to provide public financial management, capacity building and Budget support.
Using biometric identification, the Bank created a new project called Recurrent Cost and Reform Financing, which pays thousands of Public Servants.
However, several reports have warned that lack of transparency and limited supervision could lead to donor funding ending up in private individuals’ pockets.
Mr Mohamud surprisingly admitted that some senior Government officials had been travelling to perform Hajj — the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, the holiest city for Muslims — with stolen public money.
“These officials bought plane tickets with the money they stole from the Government and travelled to perform Umrah or Hajj,” he said.
Somalia, along with Syria, is ranked next-to-last in Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, which measures the perception of public sector corruption in 180 countries around the world.
According to the Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, corruption in Somalia is further exacerbated by the absence of a functional Central Government, a lack of resources and administrative capacity, weak leadership structures as well as a limited ability to pay public officials.
Mr Mohamud said his Government was trying to do something about stopping the problem of corruption in the country but it remained very weak.
“We are not happy with it,” he said.
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LONDON (December 30): The General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union has warned the United Kingdom Government that “coordinated and synchronised” strike action across the country would significantly escalate throughout January.
Mark Serwotka was speaking as his members employed in passport control for the Border Force set up picket lines at Britain’s largest airports.
Mr Serwotka pointed to a series of possible fresh strikes with half a million teachers balloting for strike action, as are firefighters, while junior doctors could also vote for a strike in protest of pay offers that do not match cost-of-living pressures.
“I think it is only a matter of time before all the unions recognise the Government is the cause of these disputes, so we will work closer together, and I think we will see action that is coordinated and synchronised, and escalating,” Mr Serwotka said.
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Canadian Province fights to preserve wage cap
TORONTO (December 30): The Government of the Canadian Province of Ontario is appealing a court decision that struck down a law limiting wages for public sector workers.
In the notice of appeal, the Government argued Justice Markus Koehnen erred in ruling that its legislation infringed the applicants' rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining and was thus unconstitutional.
Groups representing several hundred thousand public sector employees had challenged the constitutionality of the law, passed in 2019, which capped wage increases at one per cent per year for three years.
The Government had argued the law did not infringe constitutional rights, saying the Constitution only protected the process of bargaining, not the outcome, and the legislation was a time-limited approach to help eliminate a Budget deficit.
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Nigerians urged to join corruption fight
ABUJA (December 26): Nigeria’s top corruption fighter has called on the general public to help weed out fraud in the Federal Public Service.
Chair of the Anti-Corruption and Transparency Unit at the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Stella Igwilo said corrupt practices her Agency had uncovered included falsification of age, bribery, nepotism, embezzlement, influence-peddling and abuse of public office.
“The unit will interface with the members of the public to reduce the effect of corruption, ensuring good governance for effective service delivery,” Ms Igwilo said.
“This initiative shows we are committed to the total elimination of corrupt practices, and will work with all parties to achieve this.”
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Bureaucracy ‘serves people — not parties’
SUVA (December 30): Fiji’s new Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka says the nation’s Public Servants must help him as they have helped the last elected Government for the past eight years.
Mr Rabuka said Public Servants committed themselves to work for the people when they entered the bureaucracy.
He also had a word for MPs, saying they stopped being politicians when they were declared Members of Parliament — “they become servants of the people just as Public Servants have always been”.
“Once you get into Parliament, you stop being a member of a party, you become the voice of the people,” Mr Rabuka said.
The full International PS News service will resume on January 17
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