At least three former county commissioners in Northern Bahr el Ghazal State allegedly failed to remit revenues from the 2013 Household Tax to the state ministry of finance. The issue has played a role in the ongoing political crisis in the state.
The state introduced a 30-pound household tax in 2013 to fill a revenue gap after the national government cut off oil production in 2012 during a dispute with Sudan. The revenues from the tax collection were meant to be split between state and county governments with 60% going to the counties and 40% going to the state.
The commissioners initially remitted some of the tax revenues to the state government but their contributions were apparently considered inadequate, prompting the formation of an investigation committee in 2014. The committee reported to Caretaker Governor Kuel Aguer.
Hon. Bol Tong Tong, the chairman of the Household Tax Investigation Committee, sent warning letters to the commissioners on 2 May 2014 demanding that they pay back the funds within seven days.
“The committee… found that your county authority owes the Ministry of Finance a sum of 309,046 SSP,” reads one letter to Awet Kiir Awet, Aweil East Commissioner. Another similar letter to Aweil North Commissioner Kuol Athuai Hal demands an amount of 50,143 SSP, while Jiel Mangok, Aweil South Commissioner, was asked to pay back 51,272 SSP.
According to the investigation chairman, the calculations were based on 40% of the total revenues from the household tax collected in the county minus amounts already remitted by the commissioners to the state government’s “Household tax account in Ivory Bank.”
Jiel Mangok was removed from his position as Aweil South Commissioner in October 2014, by decree of the Governor Kuel Aguer. He is currently the deputy to the state SPLM chairman Paul Malong and earlier this month he announced that Kuel was stripped of his party membership.
Kuol Athuai and Awet Kiir also lost their positions in the October reshuffle, though the former was appointed as a state advisor on border issues.