Corruption in the kitchen: Sudan's losses on the back burner ✍️ Rashan O'Shea
Sudan is between the anvil of war and the hammer of accumulated crises. The Sudanese crisis is vast, accumulating and worsening, and if the country's leaders do not come out of the coma of the reality of the crisis, the results will be disastrous for the authorities and the state, because playing with fire cannot bring stability.
The exit is difficult… It begins by returning the role to the institutions, after wresting it from the control of the “paralytics”, in light of the battle for dignity which embodied an uprising against the conditions of corruption, the cases exceptional and negative political phenomena. These features have become a reality and are no longer a mirage.
After the decisions of October 25, 2021, the country entered another phase of executive and administrative chaos, and this is exactly what happened in the corridors of the “Supreme Environmental Council”, after the resignation of its secretary general appointed at the time of the government of “Dr. Hamdok”, the Ministry of the Council of Ministers requested the leadership of the Supreme Council for the Environment to appoint people to fill the position, and indeed the following people have were appointed: (Dean of the Faculty of Forestry, University of Sudan – Professor at the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Khartoum, and Dr Mona Mahjoub, Dean of the Institute of Environmental Studies – University of Khartoum).
Suddenly, a decision was made to appoint “Dr. Mona Ali”, who was not included in the list of candidates for the Council received by the Council of Ministers, but was nominated by her brother, who works as an employee of the Sovereignty Council, and was named. nominated by former member of the Sovereignty Council “Abu al-Qasim Bartam”, who is a personal friend of his brother.
The sister of the sovereign employee took up her new position in 2022 AD, and limited her to trips abroad to participate in global conferences related to the environment, accompanied each time by a “group” specific and not the rest of the employees.
Foreign travel was an opportunity for all those aspiring to obtain political asylum in the conference host country. The last time, the Secretary General was accompanied, on behalf of the State, by her private secretary and herself. The latter requested political asylum in Canada, where she now resides and carries out her duties as Secretary for Refugees.
After the outbreak of war, the Secretary General, “Dr. Mona”, moved to Egypt to reside there, and when the central authority moved to “Port Sudan”, and the Supreme Environmental Council resumed her activities, she began wandering between Cairo and Port Sudan and spent huge sums of money on tickets and basic necessities.
A number of departments of the Supreme Environmental Council have been suspended from their functions, including the Department of Environmental Impact Assessment, which is responsible for reviewing mining works.
Due to disagreements with employees, a number of important projects funded by the Global Climate Change Fund have been suspended, the largest being the “Building Resilience” project, funded at a value of (25) million dollars, and Sudan was deprived of these supports.
He fired the project manager and the accountant and appointed one of his coordinators in the States, in violation of the conditions for obtaining the position set by the funding agency, namely the United Nations Development Program, which for its part demanded reports and documents. which it failed to provide, leading to the country being deprived of funding for the project amounting to (5) million dollars.
On one occasion, the Ministry of Finance demanded payment of the local component of one of the suspended projects, amounting to (10%) of the cost, in order to pay workers' salaries. The undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance refused. , she complained about him to a member of the Sovereignty Council through her brother.
He dismissed the director of the Department of Biosecurity without cause and appointed a professor at the University of Khartoum. He lobbied, through his sovereign relations, to be excluded from the decision to terminate the mission issued by the Council of Ministers.
Of course, this is all amazing. Precision in the fight against corruption and nepotism is akin to the precision with which spies and traitors gnaw at the nerves of the Sudanese state while the minds of leaders stop at the war post. Therefore, Sudanese people should be afraid, worried and disgusted.
My love and respect
