South Sudan's elections commission hasn’t paid the rent for its headquarters in Juba and branches in the defunct 10 states for two years, the commission’s chairperson Abednego Akok Kacuol said.
The elections commission is a legally established electoral management body, with the vision to strengthen democratic culture through free and credible elections and to ensure the rights of South Sudanese to vote.
Akok told Radio Tamazuj on Monday that his commission is under legal notice for eviction in January over unpaid rentals following the government’s sustained failure to pay rental arrears for two years.
He explained that the commission has an outstanding rental arrears bill of 25 million South Sudanese Pounds.” It is true that we are facing eviction. Previously, the rent was being paid by USAID, but when the crisis started in 2014, they stopped their support to the commission,” he said.
“The rent now is the responsibility of the government, so we have been threatened by the landlord several times. The landlord demands about 25 million pounds for the 10 states and the headquarters in Juba here,” he added.
Akok appealed to donors to support the commission. “The government said it will pay but it has not yet paid anything. The offices will be closed in January,” he said.
In November, President Salva Kiir Mayardit confessed that the country is broke, citing the country’s troubled economy. The former deputy finance minister Mou Ambrose Riiny Thiik also said recently that the government has run out of cash.