Striking Parliamentary staff finally receive salary

Striking workers who disrupted the business at the National Assembly on Monday have been paid part of the allowances owed to them.

Kennedy Enoka, the acting Secretary-General of the worker’s union at the parliament, said they had only been given part of the money that was owed to them, which they decided to divide equally among themselves.

He also confirmed that the total money released was SSP4 million and each worker will receive SSP6500.

“We are more than 600 hundred staff working here,” he explained.

Natelina Amjima Malek, the Deputy Chairperson of the Specialised Committee on Information, Communication, Technology and Postal Services at the Transitional National Legislative Assembly, said police deployment was not to arrest the workers, and that no one was arrested.

Business in South Sudan’s National Legislative Assembly ground to a halt on Monday after the support staff staged a sit-in to protest delays in paying their allowances.

Yoane Wala Juma, a union leader, said the affected workers had not been paid for five months.

“We have not received salaries for five months. Sometimes we get things like incentives which help us continue working. Recently the parliament received money and we met with the administration last Tuesday and several other times after it. The issue is that they paid the MPs 80,000 each but nothing for other staff,” he said.

Parmena Awerial Aluong, the deputy speaker for finance and administration, told The City Review yesterday afternoon that the incentives were supposed to have been paid last Friday.

“It is only incentives and overtime for the work that they have done because the money that came was only for operations, which is not their allowances.”

“Because of the environment we are in we have to give them something until we get their claim from the ministry of finance,’’ Aluong added as he condemned the incident.