In a shocking move that has raised concern amongst company owners and anti-poverty groups, the government of South Sudan has ordered businesses to sack all foreign employees in favour of indigenous workers within the month.
In a statement published in several national newspapers on Tuesday, the government ordered “all non-governmental organisations, private companies, banks, insurance companies, telecommunication companies, petroleum companies, hotels and lodges working in South Sudan … to notify all the aliens working with them in all the positions to cease working as from 15th October.”
Jobs vacated by the foreign workforce are to be offered to “competent South Sudanese nationals,” the statement went on. The order specifies positions including executive directors, personnel managers, secretaries, human resources officers, public relations officials, procurement officers, logisticians, front desk officers and receptionists.
Labour and public services minister Ngor Kolong Ngor, who issued the order, said it was aimed at protecting the “rights and interests of the people of South Sudan.”
Labour under-secretary Helen Achiro said the order simply implements existing government guidelines, which state that 80 percent of employees of private companies in South Sudan should be South Sudanese.
An insurance company official who didn’t want to be named expressed concern that qualifications for senior management positions are too scarce amongst the local population to fill the executive posts that will become available under the directive.
Tarique Rieble, the South Sudan country director for Oxfam, said the timing of the government directive was bad. With large tracts of South Sudan facing severe food shortages and with hundreds of thousands displaced by nine months of conflict, NGOs like Oxfam need to expand operations, not curtail them, he said.
Emma Vickers, a researcher and campaigner at the Global Witness NGO, said firing foreign workers in key industries such as oil will push South Sudan even deeper into crisis.
“Removing foreign workers from key positions in oil companies will not help the government achieve the goal of better employment for South Sudanese,” she said, adding: “We can foresee more damage to an already damaged economy and even further dependence on oil revenues.”
Vickers said that while it is a good idea to train and educate South Sudanese to take on management roles in the oil industry, now, in the middle of a crisis, was not the time to do it.
South Sudan is said to have the most oil dependent economy in the world, with more than 90 percent of government revenues coming from oil.
