UN plan to fire 290 Uganda staff leaks

Kampala.

Some 290 employees at the Regional Service Centre in Entebbe (RSCE) are going to lose their jobs if a proposal to shift the Centre to Nairobi, Kenya is adopted, according to details in a leaked United Nations internal briefing paper.
The confidential document shows that Ugandans number 205 among staff to be sacked when finance, human resources and administrative functions are relocated under UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s ambitious Global Service Delivery Model reforms.
“A reduction of 290 posts is proposed for the Regional Service Centre Entebbe, including 25 national officer posts and 180 national general service staff posts,” the document reads in part.
Highly-placed sources told Daily Monitor that President Museveni, who on April 28, 2018 wrote to Mr Guterres to convey Uganda’s displeasure over the proposal to shift the Centre, has been briefed on the development.
He had questioned the criteria used, which by some accounts included democracy, peace and security to arrive at a decision to shift the UN Centre to Kenya.
In the letter, the President argued that the world body’s functions and assets should be equitably shared among member states yet Kenya already hosts the UN Habitat and Environmental programmes offices.
“This is not fair,” he wrote.
Secretary General Guterres in his reply downplayed fears of possible job losses if RSCE was to close, noting that in any case affected Ugandans would be facilitated to get new jobs in relocated shared services.
Details in the latest document titled, briefing notes on the United Nations in Uganda, which provides five key talking points for UN officials to guide engagements with Ugandan counterparts, is less re-assuring.
“Ugandan staff at the general service level could apply to job openings for positions that will be created in the global shared services centre as third-party nationals. The UN office in Nairobi has confirmed that affected staff could compete for work in Kenya,” the document reads in part.
A source familiar with the arrangements said UN Resident coordinator in Uganda Rosa Malango is now on an overdrive diplomatic charm offensive, and is bandying statistics on general work of UN in country, in an attempt to placate restless Ugandans and their leaders. Ms Malango briefed Parliament Speaker Rebecca Kadaga about the developments in a meeting on Monday and informed her that some 1,697 Ugandans will in any case still hold jobs with 18 UN agencies here. She also told Ms Kadaga that nearly 1,000 and another 498 slots will still be available at the Entebbe Support Base – MONUSCO and RSCE, respectively.
The bulk of these jobs will be for contractors and service providers such as caterers, cleaners and guards with a few dozens in IT and communication, regional signals academy, training and conference management and movement control.
Spokesperson Michael Wangusa last evening confirmed Ms Malango’s meeting with Speaker Kadaga but said he did not know what transpired since he never attended.
He referred us to the briefing notes when asked if far few jobs would be available following the relocation of the RSCE than UN acknowledges.
Parliament’s Communications Director Chris Obore was not available when reached over this story.
A source briefed on the discussions said Ms Malango impressed it upon the Speaker that the proposed changes were to Uganda’s advantage.
She, for instance, outlined up to 77 jobs in regional procurement office, office of internal oversight services, civilian redeployment training, mine action services, Ombudsman, United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei and the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Central African Republic.
Ms Malango, according to one source, told Ms Kadaga that “as part of the reform, there has been a significant transfer to Entebbe of training-related activities from the Global Service Centre in Brandisi, Italy, as well as peace-keeping workshops and seminars held previously at the United Nations headquarters (in New York”.
“This ensures a constant, regular, flow of short-term visitors, both civilian and uniformed, visiting Uganda. This is in recognition of Uganda’s role in peace-keeping and security in the region,” the UN resident coordinator reportedly said, reading from the briefing notes.
Members of Parliament this month condemned the proposal to shift the centre, which handles backend administrative work for UN, to Kenya.
The reforms, proposed six years ago, aim to consolidate backend UN administrative functions in three dispersed locations - Nairobi, Budapest and City of Mexico - to reduce costs and increase responsiveness of field staff.
The Entebbe centre has, according to information on its website, been processing up to 364,200 payroll, telephone bill, vendor invoice, travel and other requests as well education grants each year in support of 13 UN missions in Africa. Ms Malango in the Monday meeting did not explain why the centre, which has been working seamlessly, was targeted for relocation when the cost of living and salary for UN staff is lower in Uganda than in Kenya or other preferred locations.
Besides, the Entebbe centre established in 2010 under UN General Assembly resolution 64/269 has worked well as a Global Field Support Strategy, the precursor to the proposed Global Service Delivery Model.
“Rather than relocate it, the UN should be replicating and improving on RSCE’s successes in other locations,” one senior Ugandan official said, preferring not to be named in order not to rattle diplomatic relations.
“Why remove what is working in order to start a new one expensively, when unsure it will work, yet the reform is to reduce UN’s operating costs,” the official added.
These and other concerns, according to individuals familiar with the discussions, prompted Speaker Kadaga to meet representatives of other stakeholders on Wednesday.
She was informed that Uganda would get a raw deal if it does not fight the UN secretariat’s proposal and force a General Assembly vote on it.
The meeting that followed the one with Ms Malango also took place at Parliament building. According to sources, Ms Kadaga was told that the accounts offered in the UN internal briefing notes, particularly a reference to jobs in the 18 UN agencies operating in Uganda, were “misleading” and calculated to distract officials.
These UN agencies are available in most member countries, the Speaker was told, and the representatives questioned the motive of bringing their contribution into a discussion on the RSCE.

UN interests
“Rosa’s mission is intended to serve the intentions of the UN secretary general to calm [Ugandan authorities] so that everything is fine and her boss’s plan can sail through without opposition,” another high-level source said.
Statistics available shows that only 21 Ugandans currently occupy 77 jobs under eight RSCE services proposed to be kept.
One source said whereas the biggest slots are for contractors, numbering 421 as of April 2018, Trigyn, a firm that recruits to support UN work, would not employ people when lucrative jobs in human resources, administration and finance disappear.
A surprise March deal between President Uhuru Kenyatta and rival Raila Odinga presented Kenya’s future as more stable and predictable than Uganda where planned talks between President Museveni and his four-time challenger Kizza Besigye remained wet in the wings even after Sweden offered to mediate.
The UN has invested about Shs21b in the Entebbe centre that employs 498 staff. Their collective spending alongside that of some 6,000 annual official UN guests, one official familiar with the records said, has turned the Centre into a vanguard of the peninsula town’s economy.