Transitional President calls on the UN for help

Guinea-Bissau’s President, Henrique Perreira Rosa, has called on the United Nations Security Council to help meet a growing wage bill at home and to back his transitional government as it prepares for elections. Speaking after a closed-door meeting at the UN in New York, Rosa said he had made two requests to the 15-member Council. "As you know we are the transitional authority," said Rosa. "We need immediate and urgent help to pay government employees a year’s salaries." The Guinean government, he added, was prepared to submit a formal request for assistance from donor countries by the end of next month. Rosa pledged that elections would be help by March 2004, the target date agreed on by the transitional authorities in Bissau. "We hope those elections will go well, but for that the international community must help us to establish a favourable atmosphere so people can vote freely - with transparency and freedom," he said. Nearly 10 weeks after the coup which ousted former President Kumba Yala, Guinea-Bissau remains beset with social and economic problems. Non-payment of salaries remains one of the most pressing issues for the new government. Until now, the government has only managed to pay salaries for one month, October, yet many workers are owed close to one year’s wages. Minister of Economy and Finance, Abubacar Demba Dahaba, has said there is simply no money in the treasury to pay anything. However in an effort to standardise the payment of salaries and eliminate the payments made to ‘ghost workers’, the government was now trying to pay salaries through banks. But Guinea-Bissau has only one commercial bank, the Bank of West Africa (BAO). Payments were therefore being made through the BAO and the international money transfer agency, Western Union. Every morning, hundreds of citizens have been lining up in front of these institutions and payment is conditional on presentation of a valid identity card or other kind of identification. No ID means no money. Along with the shortage of money, people in Bissau also went without water and electricity for a week after workers at the state-owned water and electricity company, EAGB, went on strike, protesting at the non-payment of one year’s salaries and nearly two years subsidies, along with the authorities’ failure to supply 20 sacks of rice. The strike ended on Tuesday after the government promised to pay one month of salary arrears to the workers concerned and to supply the power station in Bissau with 900,000 litres of fuel within a month. But workers at the EAGB have warned they will strike again if the government doesn't’t honour its commitments. The coup, analysts said, had changed nothing in terms of people’s material well-being but local people appeared willing to give the new authorities the benefit of the doubt. The National Transitional Council, which is steering Guinea-Bissau through its post-coup phase, has meanwhile announced the creation of a commission charged with auditing the accounts of Kumba Yala’s last government, which was headed by former Prime Minister Mario Pires and was in office between December 2002 and September 2003.