Talking point: Chiefs concerns over pay – a possible solution?
By Skye Wheeler
YEI, Sudan, June 30, (Gurtong) – Ambiguity still hangs over the issue of payment for chiefs said a local government official from Central Equatoria State (CES) during a traditional authority conference that took place last week in Yei.
Statements by traditional leaders calling for reparation for work done over the past decades and today were common during the conference which ended with the formation of a council of traditional leaders for the state.
“During the war, we kept food in our homes for the SPLA … John Garang said as soon as peace comes the first people to be helped are the chiefs, but where is this promise now?” said one chief.
“We were told we would be paid when peace comes. We expected that this would happen at the same time as the soldiers began to be paid,” said Joseph Brown Lomose a Kakwa paramount chief “how can you live without a salary?”.
The Local Government Board in the office of the presidency is supposed to produce a draft act that would clarify whether and how chiefs would receive remuneration for services provided. But James Brown, the CES director general for local government and law enforcement said that it was still unclear how this issue will be dealt with.
“Chiefs should take something but it should not be an official salary as that would undermine their autonomy,” said Brown. He explained that as chiefs are answerable to their communities it would be incorrect to salary them as civil servants who are open to dismissal and discipline from the government.
Although no promises were made, Brown suggested to the chiefs that some kind of un-contracted remuneration for their vital work at the grassroots might be an answer although he also admitted that there was already a struggle to pay all civil servants in the state.
The civil conflict in Sudan broke down the former practice of chiefs retaining a small percentage of poll tax collected said Brown, and traditional methods of payment in kind from the community is no longer possible.
“People are no longer prepared to cultivate for chiefs,” he said “but no one should work for nothing”. Brown also said that it was already understood that in normal circumstances a government would not dictate or change the choice of a community for a chief.
“The government would not be able to interfere unless the chief was under some kind of criminal charge, the chief is accountable to the community and not the government,” he said.
But one analyst at the conference said that any kind of material support from the government would undermine the authority of the chiefs and their communities in deciding how to organize themselves.
In other African countries alternatives had been found to direct governmental payment often through communities generating their own income the analyst explained.
But such autonomy is not the way forward in at least Chief Lomose’s perspective.
“But we already know that we as chiefs are under government – the role at the root end of government and having our cultures in our hands – the government is us and even without payment we are still part of it,” he said.
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