*** 05-Aug-99 ***
Title: POLITICS-UN: Peacekeepers Were Overpaid Millions
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 5 (IPS) - The United Nations has written off
more than 5.4 million dollars through ''overpayments'' in salary
allowances to UN military observers assigned to a peacekeeping
mission in the Middle East.
The decision to absorb the loss - suffered by the UN Iraq-
Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM) - comes at a time when the
cash-strapped world body is battling an ongoing financial crisis.
The United Nations said it had no choice but to write off the
huge loss because the beneficiaries of the overpayments simply
took the money and ran.
The total overpayments made to about 150 peacekeepers in UNIKOM
amounted to 6.3 million dollars, of which 86 percent went to
military observers and the balance to civilian staff from the
Secretariat who were seconded for service in the Iraqi-Kuwait
border.
As the civilians were still in the UN payroll, the Secretariat
managed to recover the money due from them. But most of the
military observers, who were all on loan, went back to their home
countries after their tour with UNIKOM - and refused to return the
excess payments.
''Only the UN staff has been asked to pay back money - because
the Secretariat cannot locate the military observers who no longer
are in the service of the United Nations,'' said Rosemary Waters,
a former president of the UN Staff Union.
''It is grossly unfair to penalise only the Secretariat
staffers for no fault of theirs,'' she added.
After a series of investigations, which began in 1996, the
Secretariat decided to write off the overpayments made to the
military observers - amounting to about 5.4 million dollars -
because declared the money non-recoverable.
The only amount the Secretariat managed to recover from military
observers was about 122,573 dollars.
The decision to write off the overpayments still must be
approved by the 185-member General Assembly later this year.
The overpayments began in 1991 due to miscalculations in
arrriving at a special subsistence allowances given to UN
peacekeepers and civilian staff serving in overseas missions.
In a report to the General Assembly released Wednesday,
Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the Secretariat had decided ''to
continue recovery only in respect of civilian staff'' and all
''recoveries from military staff would be halted.''
''The efforts of the Secretariat to recover the overpayment
have included communications to all UN permanent missions
concerned (in New York) outlining the problem and requesting their
assistance in facilitating the recovery in accordance with the
decisions and resolutions of the General Assembly,'' Annan said.
The Secretariat sent notification letters to each of the
military observers who had departed from UNIKOM . In addition, the
Secretariat also wrote to all UN permanent missions in New York
seeking their assistance in recovering the monies.
But most of the responses received challenged the recovery
efforts. One of them said it was ''unfair to seek reimbursement
from the officers so many years after they had served in UNIKOM
and mission subsistence allowance had been paid.''
UNIKOM was established immediately after the January 1991 Gulf
War to monitor a demilitarised zone (DMZ) along the boundary
between Iraq and Kuwait. The total number of staffers was about
150, including military observers, civilian staff and local
recruits.
A report by the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS)
revealed ''the intractable complexity'' of the subsistance
allowance policy and procedures, and more importantly, the
considerable potential for varying interpretations and
applications.
When the overpayment was discovered in 1996 the OIOS chief, Under
Secretary-General Karl Paschke, said that it was not only a matter
of recovering the overpayment; more important, was to make sure it
will not happen again.
Describing it as is one of the ''significant'' cases of
overpayments by the United Nations, he admitted ''there are other
cases as well'' though not necessarily on the same scale.
Asked who should be responsible for the huge loss, Paschke said
''theoretically the chief financial officer of the mission has to
be responsible for it, and possibly others too''.
The UN's biggest single loss, however, remained the 3.9 million
dollars stolen in 1993 from a compound that housed the offices of
the UN peacekeeping operations in Somalia. Although Scotland Yard
was called in to investigate the loss, all investigations drew a
blank. (END/IPS/td/mk/99)
Origin: ROMAWAS/POLITICS-UN/
----
Copyright 1999 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
[c] 1999, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
All rights reserved
May not be reproduced, reprinted or posted to any system or
service outside of the APC networks, without specific
permission from IPS.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
