South Sudan’s members of parliament at the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) have expressed dissatisfaction over the 11 positions recently granted to them as affirmative action for recruitment in the East African Community.
In a video shared by South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation, the Chairperson of the EALA South Sudan Chapter, Dr Anne Itto, said the 11 positions did not meet their requirements, which led to the halting of the recruitment exercise.
She said they protested the recruitment on the grounds that the quota system has not been observed yet.
“When we moved a motion in the house, it was about the irregularities in the recruitment process of EAC. We wanted a process that utilizes the rules and regulations like the quota system, applied properly, and especially for South Sudan, where we have only four people,” Dr Itto said, adding that “not implementing the quota system means that we have to end up begging for affirmative action.”
Dr Itto questioned the positions granted to South Sudan, saying she suspected that they were junior positions that would not give the country an influence in the decision making.
“These 11 positions are supposed to come from advertised positions, and we don’t know whether these are positions for guards, drivers, cleaners, or what. “When you end up as a driver or junior staff, it means you have no say in how an institution is run,” she explained.
“If we don’t have people as directors if we don’t have people as secretary generals if we don’t have people working in professional positions; it means that we are not influencing decisions, and, of course, so many things are going on in the EAC.”
Affirmative action granted
South Sudan was granted an affirmative action on Tuesday this week in a meeting of the council of ministers in charge of East African Community Affairs. The country was apportioned 11 positions which were not to be contested.
The Chairperson of the East African Council of Ministers, Adan Mohamed, earlier said the council resolved to reserve positions for South Sudan and other new partner states who do not have great chances of competing for roles in the EAC Secretariat.
“We have agreed that 11 roles will be made available for the Republic of South Sudan, above the five that were shortlisted in the ongoing recruitment, so if the five also succeed, they will have eleven plus the five that will have successfully been recruited,” Adan said.
Adan added that the shortlisted candidates would soon be called for interviews at the soonest time possible.
The ministers passed a resolution during the meeting to ensure that positions where any of the partner states had not been shortlisted, or at most one had been shortlisted, should be re-advertised. They directed the secretariat to re-advertise such positions in January 2022.
“The meeting noted that it was not tenable for a position to attract only one candidate that meets the requirement, and the others could not be shortlisted,” read the statement after the meeting.
The council called for disbursement of contributions from the community’s partner states for the financial year 2021-2022, in accordance with the EAC Finance Rules and Regulations (2012) for the execution of the approved budget.
It (the council) further called for the remittance of arrears by the partner states in accordance with the disbursement plans.
Halting of recruitment
The recruitment process was halted last month after EALA South Sudan Chapter demanded affirmative action when only 14 applicants from South Sudan were shortlisted.