A senior official at South Sudan's finance ministry said Friday that the government's national crisis committee was not responsible for paying for accommodation for Riek Gai Kok, who was a member of the committee and currently is the minister of health.

A hotel in Juba has taken the health minister to court over failure to pay his hotel bills.

The health ministry has sought compensation of the minister's hotel bills from the account of the now defunct crisis committee, which operated under the presidency's budget in 2014.

Undersecretary in the Ministry of Health Makur Matur Koriom recently argued that the bills for accommodation of Minister Riek Gai Kok and other officials who have been staying in different hotels since the beginning of the crisis in December 2013 would be settled by the government.

Matur made the comments in response to a court summons from the hotel administration. Minister Riek Gai, according to Makur, was supposed to appear in court on Thursday. He failed to appear and the circumstances of failure remain unclear. 

A senior finance ministry official commented on the case in an interview on Friday: “I think there is lack of clarity in the case of the accommodation of the minister of health. As far as I know, the minister was in that hotel before the formation of the crisis management committee.”

“Also the terms of references for crisis management committee did not include a text for accommodation of the members. I was one of the members and I was not accommodated and did not even complain about it,” said the senior official.

Contradicting this, the undersecretary at the health ministry is quoted as saying that “bills were not incurred by the minister as a person but was doing his job as part of crisis managing committee that was installed in the aftermath of 2013 crisis.”

Related: 

Profile of Health Minister Riek Gai Kok (part of our series 'Healthcare in Crisis')