A section of civil servants in Sudan’s East Darfur State have said they are living in harsh conditions due to a six-month delay in the payment of salaries.
An employee at the Ministry of Social Welfare, Hassan Mohammed Abunjoor, confirmed to Radio Tamazuj that they had gone without pay for many months.
“We have not been paid our salaries for more than six months and the workers are now living in poverty,” he said adding that many government employees have abandoned their jobs to look for better-paying opportunities.
A teacher, Hamdan Adam Hamdan, said they could no longer afford food and other necessities for their families.
“We are living under very difficult circumstances and most of us cannot buy the consumer goods that our families need daily,” he said “The costs of treatment are also high as diseases like malaria are common during the rains.”
Another educator, Abdul Rahman Abdullah, described the teachers’ living conditions as difficult due to lack of pay.
For his part, the Director General at the East Darfur State Ministry of Finance, Dr. Ahmed Bakkar, attributed the non-disbursement of salaries to the current circumstances, referring to the war between the armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces which erupted on 15 April.
“We would have paid salaries to the workers and teachers but it is known that the systems in the banks have been suspended since the beginning of the war,” he stated.
Dr. Bakkar revealed that the workers were last paid salaries in April from the state’s resources and that the other states in Darfur are just planning to pay the April salaries.
He revealed that the governor of East Darfur State is in Port Sudan to handle the issue of salary arrears and expects that the state’s salary accounts will soon be replenished with finances to pay salaries for at least two months.
Dr. Bakkar thanked the civil servants in East Darfur for their patience and tolerance.