Hooray ! I finally got authorization Friday evening, the 19th of June, for the salary and job function scale changes. Then it was a race against the clock to implement these changes. We had an all-day meeting Saturday with the project coordinators, so I couldn’t do anything that day. Sunday I worked from 10:00am until 8:00pm implementing the changes into various tables and data bases, and prepared my presentation for the staff. Monday, I cleaned up all the essential work necessary before going on an announcement tour. Tuesday the 23rd, I left for Rutshuru (3 hour drive), where we made the announcement the same day. Wednesday, I went to Kabizo (2 ½ hours), where we again made the announcement the same day. Same thing Thursday for Nyanzale (3 hours). I had to leave Nyanzale rather late on Friday, arriving in Kayna at 5:00pm after a 2 ½ hour drive. That was too late for the meeting (the staff needs to be home before nightfall at 6:00pm for security reasons), so we made the announcements Saturday morning, the 27th at 7:45am. I left directly afterwards at 8:30am and arrived here at 5:00pm. My last presentation was to the staff here in Goma at 8:30 Monday morning. It was a whirlwind trip, but I had to put the changes in place at each site and announce the actions before paying the staff on Monday the 29th.
Overall, the acceptance of the changes was good. Essentially, we made an operational change in the job function scale to allow us more flexibility in moving nurses between different services. And we augmented the lowest salaries to maintain an acceptable living standard for our employees. Of course, the people who didn’t receive an augmentation would have preferred to have one. We explained that they are already fairly well paid next to other organizations like ours, and that we would continue to monitor the situation for future salary evolutions.
Since Sunday, I have been catching up on the work that arrived while I was gone.
Today (the 30th of June) is the Congolese national holiday, the 49th celebration of independence from Belgium. President Kabila is here in Goma for the celebrations. They finished the road work just last night on the street on which the parade took place! Kabila flipped the switch on the new streetlights last night as part of the festivities. Today a few of us expats went downtown to watch part of the parade. I think about half of the town was in the parade, with the other half watching.
Most of the other non-governmental organizations went across the border into Rwanda, in case any of the rebel groups took advantage of the festivities to make a “statement”. But with all the military troups in place, I have never seen the town so secure. Unfortunately, the troups tend to be less disciplined after dark, so we will not be moving from the compound after 6:00pm until their departure.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
June in Congo
A month has gone by, and still no decision on our salary and job function scales! The team in Paris who should validate these has been decimated lately by illness and family problems. Hopefully, the team will be complete next week so that we can get some decisions. I need to put the changes into our human resources management system, and then I have to make a tour of the projects to explain the changes, all before the end of June.
And it is going to be difficult to find the time. My finance collegue just returned from her break in France, and she must go out to the field all of this week to finalize the budget revision - she is also under time pressure. So I am covering for her. And my own two assistants are at the MSF-France general assembly for the moment, so I am covering for them too. It’s pretty hectic. But it is the same for all of us. When I leave on vacation for the month of August, my finance collegue is going to suffer!
For the moment, security here in Goma is changing for the worst. There have been a couple of attacks on some of the other big Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) here in the las couple of months, and these robberies were very violent. About 80 homes were burned and looted this past week in one part of town. And at 8:00pm last night as I was preparing to leave the office for the house, there were a few gunshots just behind the office. The guards actually saw the bullet traces go over our compound.
But this is still very calm next to the towns where we have our programs. The people living in the compound in Rutshuru spent part of last night in the security room due to shooting. In Kayna, this happens fairly regularly (as it did when I was there in 2005-2006). The attacks are usually attributed to one armed faction or another. The soldiers are paid sporadically and they have guns, so the take what they need. For various reasons, the unemployment here is very high, and MSF is known to pay our staff rather well. This makes our people good targets for bandits, and aggressions against them are rather common.
Our head of mission and medical coordinator get back this week from strategy meetings and the general assembly in Paris. We will have all the project coordinators here in Goma next weekend with us, to hear the results of these meetings and to plan the process of achieving the strategies. We are all looking forward to hearing which of our proposals were accepted and which were not.
And it is going to be difficult to find the time. My finance collegue just returned from her break in France, and she must go out to the field all of this week to finalize the budget revision - she is also under time pressure. So I am covering for her. And my own two assistants are at the MSF-France general assembly for the moment, so I am covering for them too. It’s pretty hectic. But it is the same for all of us. When I leave on vacation for the month of August, my finance collegue is going to suffer!
For the moment, security here in Goma is changing for the worst. There have been a couple of attacks on some of the other big Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) here in the las couple of months, and these robberies were very violent. About 80 homes were burned and looted this past week in one part of town. And at 8:00pm last night as I was preparing to leave the office for the house, there were a few gunshots just behind the office. The guards actually saw the bullet traces go over our compound.
But this is still very calm next to the towns where we have our programs. The people living in the compound in Rutshuru spent part of last night in the security room due to shooting. In Kayna, this happens fairly regularly (as it did when I was there in 2005-2006). The attacks are usually attributed to one armed faction or another. The soldiers are paid sporadically and they have guns, so the take what they need. For various reasons, the unemployment here is very high, and MSF is known to pay our staff rather well. This makes our people good targets for bandits, and aggressions against them are rather common.
Our head of mission and medical coordinator get back this week from strategy meetings and the general assembly in Paris. We will have all the project coordinators here in Goma next weekend with us, to hear the results of these meetings and to plan the process of achieving the strategies. We are all looking forward to hearing which of our proposals were accepted and which were not.
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