South Sudan’s civil service has discrepancies – reports
September 10, 2011 (JUBA) – Discrepancies have been revealed in the civil service of the newly born state of South Sudan following data collection from the ten states of the country.
South Sudan had been a semi-autonomous region for six years following the signing of a peace deal in 2005 which ended the 21 years old North-South civil war. The region became independent on 9 July after its people voted overwhelmingly for independence from the rest of Sudan.
South Sudan is seeking to recruit skilled and experienced public servants who can boost the capacity of the civil service, particularly at the local government level where capacity levels are weakest.
With tens of thousands of civil servants returning from North Sudan after the split of the country, the region’s leadership formed a national committee to collect a data in South Sudan’s ten states and at the national level with the aim to identify vacant positions which could be filled by the returnees.
However, in a meeting on Thursday chaired by South Sudan’s Vice President, Riek Machar, the presentations by the national committee for absorption and reintegration and various state governments’ ministers of labour and public service revealed a number of discrepancies in their respective civil service institutions as some of their nominal rolls, pay rolls and budgets did not tally.
It was discovered that some people are employed without any corresponding nominal rolls to the positions they occupy despite the states having hundreds of vacancies in their nominal positions while other names are included in the pay rolls outside the budgets. Some others also hold more than one position in different public institutions.
The meeting resolved that the national committee should continue to harmonise the data with the states sub-committees and extended their mandate for another six months within which to complete the absorption and reintegration process.
Corruption is one of the many major problems facing South Sudan as it attempts to recover from decades of conflict.
(ST)