The Fi­nance Min­is­ter of the Gov­ern­ment of So­ma­lia Mr. Mo­hamed Adan Ibarhim (Far­keeti) stated be­fore par­lia­ment last week that all pub­lic ser­vants have been with­out salary for four months. This ex­tra­or­di­nary con­fes­sion was pub­lic knowl­edge for months and pub­lic ser­vants in all sec­tors in­clud­ing the civil ser­vice, se­cu­rity forces and the po­lice had been com­plain­ing loudly to get the is­sue dealt with ur­gently.

In a Mo­gadishu restau­rant six po­lice of­fi­cers told HOL that many of them are fac­ing home­less­ness and the prospect of not been able to pro­vide food for their fam­i­lies.

“We have not had salaries since Jan­u­ary and yes­ter­day the shop I bor­rowed food from for my fam­ily stopped lend­ing to me,” said one of the po­lice­men who did not want to be named.

An­other Po­lice­man had al­ready been evicted from his home and he and his young fam­ily had moved back in with his mother.

“It is very sad that we are work­ing so hard to help our peo­ple and we are be­com­ing home­less,” said the po­lice­man who again did not want to be named. “The fact is that my mother and five broth­ers de­pend on me too.”

All the Po­lice­men un­der­stood that no pub­lic ser­vant had been paid since Jan­u­ary and all blamed the Gov­ern­ment and the donors who promised to con­tribute to re­build­ing So­ma­lia when the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment was formed in 2012.

“I am sure both the Gov­ern­ment of So­ma­lia and the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity are equally to blame but since we don’t work for the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity we can only hold our gov­ern­ment re­spon­si­ble,” said an­other po­lice­man.

Em­ploy­ees work­ing in Gov­ern­ment Min­istries have not had bet­ter luck and most have not been paid since Jan­u­ary too.

“Life is hard def­i­nitely and I am strug­gling every­day but I still go to work be­cause all of the pub­lic ser­vants are suf­fer­ing like me,” said Ahmed Mo­hamed who is em­ployed as a sec­re­tary in one of So­ma­li­a’s many Min­istries.

“I used to live in a room with col­leagues from my Min­istry and we are now all fac­ing evic­tion if we don’t pay our rent this month,” said an­other pub­lic ser­vant who did not want to be named. “If it hap­pens, we have to re­turn to live with fam­ily and my prob­lem is that I am the only one liv­ing in Mo­gadishu from mine.”

While pub­lic ser­vants had been as­sured by the Min­istry of Fi­nance that some salaries will be paid within the month of Ra­madan most are not ex­pect­ing much.

“Even if we are paid it will be for just one month and not the full pe­riod,” said Ahmed Omar, an ad­viser to the Gov­ern­ment. “What will this do for me? Which debt should I pay first?”

“There is no point in just get­ting one month pay be­cause all your debtors crowd around and you don’t know who to pay and if you don’t pay one but you pay the other you lose an es­sen­tial ser­vice and friends,” added Ahmed’s col­league in frus­tra­tion. “If we don’t get all the salary we are owed it will not be a good Ra­madan or Eid for us and our fam­i­lies who de­pend on us.”

The Min­is­ter for Fi­nance stated be­fore Par­lia­ment that, while the rev­enue col­lec­tion was go­ing well, the coun­try was not mak­ing enough to ser­vice its needs quickly enough. He also blamed the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity which pledged to pay 51% of the cost of run­ning the Gov­ern­ment for not act­ing quickly enough in ful­fill­ing their promises.

Most pub­lic ser­vants in­ter­viewed by HOL felt that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance was not been to­tally hon­est and that much had left the sys­tem through cor­rup­tion.

“When the Min­is­ter was asked how much money the Pres­i­dent and the Prime Min­is­ter took on their trav­els abroad he re­fused to say,” stated a po­lice­man who did not want to be named. “That is why I think the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity is mak­ing things hard: there is lit­tle hon­esty from our gov­ern­ment.”

The late and drip-drip process of salary pay­ments to pub­lic ser­vants in So­ma­lia has had a large ef­fect on the lo­cal econ­omy.

“Many of my cus­tomers work for the Gov­ern­ment and all of them have no salary so I give them credit but I have stopped since last month be­cause I am fright­ened they can­not pay the debts back,” said Mu­nira Hawa who owns a food store in the Ho­dan dis­trict of Mo­gadishu.

Other traders felt trapped too and while most did not want to refuse pub­lic ser­vant cus­tomers credit, all wor­ried about their abil­ity to pay back.

“We have to re­spect peo­ple work­ing for our Gov­ern­ment be­cause it is a risky job but we also need to pay for the goods we are sell­ing to those we brought it from,” said an em­ployee of the elec­tric­ity com­pany. “The Gov­ern­ment must be more re­spon­si­ble and or­gan­ised to pay for its staff like any other busi­ness.”

Many pub­lic ser­vants told HOL that they are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing enor­mous pres­sures and that as a re­sult their morale is at rock bot­tom. They also all ad­mit­ted that this is af­fect­ing their abil­ity to carry out their du­ties ef­fec­tively. Many went fur­ther and said that had they had other op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able to them they would leave pub­lic ser­vice al­to­gether be­cause they were not val­ued.