Residents walk past a branch of the Bank of Khartoum in the eastern Sudanese town of Gedaref on July 9, 2023 (AFP/-)
“We only eat one meal a day and I don’t know for how long”: Imed Mohammed, a teacher for 32 years, has not received a salary since March, like all civil servants caught up in the torments of the war in Sudan.
The war that has ravaged his country since April 15 has certainly not reached his state of Al-Jazeera, south of Khartoum, but for three months he has not received a salary, let alone the bonuses promised for Muslim holidays of Eid al-Fitr in April and Eid al-Adha in June.
As soon as the first exchanges of fire between the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the Rapid Support Forces (FSR), paramilitaries led by General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, the banks closed in Khartoum.
This is also the case in the other 17 states of Sudan: the agencies are unable to establish any contact with their headquarters in the capital, because the bombardments and other air raids have seriously damaged electricity, telephone lines and networks. Communication.
– “War or hunger” –
Customers enter a bank branch in the eastern Sudanese town of Gedaref on July 9, 2023 (AFP/-)
This five-member head of family tells AFP that he waited in vain for a transfer in April, then in May, then in June, like the other civil servants, around one million according to an informal census since the Sudanese state does not provides few official figures.
For Ammar Youssef, head of the Teachers’ Committee, the fact that public and private teachers have not received a Sudanese pound since the start of the war plunges “these teachers and their families into a catastrophic situation”, which came to add to the horrors of a war which has already caused approximately 3,000 deaths and three million displaced persons and refugees.
According to him, not only “they can no longer feed their families but in addition, they cannot flee the combat zones for lack of money” to pay for transport, while the price of fuel has been multiplied by 20 from the start. of the conflict.
“Those that the war will not kill will die of hunger”, he is alarmed. Sudan and its 48 million people battling soaring food prices are now among the areas on high alert for possible famine, according to the UN.
The salaries of the 300,000 public teachers were already derisory before the war, recalls Mr. Youssef.
Since April 15, the Minister of Education has been absent, he accuses. The only civil servants who have been paid are the military.
– Response –
Residents walk past a bank branch in the eastern Sudanese town of Gedaref on July 9, 2023 (AFP/-)
At the beginning of July, the Central Bank announced that it had restored the operation of its branches in most of the country’s states, reviving the hopes of certain officials.
For the economist Mohammed al-Nayer, if the salaries are not paid, it is solely the fault of the Ministry of Finance because, according to him, Finance should function normally in the “15 States not affected by the war”.
Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim, an ex-rebel now aligned with the military, continues to hold press conferences to ensure the fiscal year is not under threat.
Mr. Nayer predicts “an even worse situation in the months to come” in this country, which has long been one of the poorest in the world where inflation, long before the war, was in three digits.
“We do not understand why our salaries are not paid and why the State does not pay us what is due to us”, gets carried away Alsamani Mohammed, civil servant of the ministry of Agriculture.
With no response from Khartoum so far, several unions are getting organized. A front grouping doctors, engineers, teachers and journalists recently announced “escalation measures if salaries are not paid”.
© 2023 AFP
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