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Thu, 2 Sep 2010
APIA, Samoa (SAMOA OBSERVER) ---- Nine people have resigned from the United Nations (UN) office in Samoa since March this year.
But the Head of the UN operations in Samoa, Nileema Noble, has denied that her office is in crisis.
“For UNDP, this is also an opportunity to revitalise ourselves, to get new blood in and fresh opportunity for my staff as new openings mean opportunity for others to move up within the system,” said Ms Noble, who is the UN’s Resident Coordinator and Representative for Samoa, Niue Cook Islands and Tokelau.
Ms Noble confirmed the resignations but attributed them to three reasons.
“Our salary scales is not so good so we have been unsuccessful in attracting the level of people that we want,” she said. “The second thing is clearly there is a small resource base here in Samoa. Yes there are qualified people but there’s also a great demand for that small group of qualified people especially in the area we are looking to hire.
“The third reason is many of those who left have been working in excess of five to seven years at UNDP.
“So it’s pretty natural as far as normal career progression of people to take up jobs with other institutions and governments. Some have gone onto government another to a regional institution and one to an international institution for higher remuneration.”
But a letter from a disgruntled staff member claimed workers for the UN in Samoa are “going through hell.” The letter accused Ms Noble of having a “dictatorial attitude and mannerisms” among other things.
Another former staff member who doesn’t want to be named for fear of negative consequence on his current employment disputed Ms Noble’s reasons for staff members leaving.
“Of the nine that have left, three of us did because of better jobs,” he said. “For the rest they just couldn’t work in the stifling environment. A number of staff just couldn’t take being treated this badly.”
The leadership within the UN office is stifling, said the former staff member.
“There’s a daily call-up session to her office,” he told the Samoa Observer.
“She doesn’t call you up and say, ‘Hey may I discuss this with you’…no she just rings and says, ‘Come up to my office right now!’ and then hangs up. It’s that kind of treatment that some of the staff found hard to get on with. Many questioned this type of leadership likening it to being called at like a dog.
“Usually our daily meeting would go something like this. Nileema would say, ‘I want you to work on A,B,C and D.’
“When do you want it you’d say. ‘Yesterday’, she’ll retort. Ok, but yesterday in our meeting we discussed this and so I’m working on E,F,G and H. She would say, ‘Yeah but I want A,B,C and D now.’
“So the work kind of pile up and at the end of the week with half of them due already it’s really stressful. Then on top of that she micromanages your work and as a result she sometimes stops you from going to meetings necessary to deliver a number of your program outputs.
“These include Steering committee meetings or Technical team meetings with projects in Samoa or abroad. And that’s evidenced by the office travel being reduced by some 90 percent.
“As a result of non-appearance, many times we cop bad wraps because when we attend a meeting next time, they say why wasn’t UNDP here last meeting, what is UNDP doing and then all these questions start coming from donors and stakeholders to UNDP, ‘what are you people actually doing?’
Ms Noble denied she overburdens staff and micromanages their work,
“As managers we are mindful we are not overburdening anybody,” she said. “And if you look at the program to administrative cost in other words every staff member delivering ‘x’ amount of project cost, it’s not at all heavy.
“I’ve worked in offices where we delivered US$250 million annually with similar number of staff. So I’d suggest that it’s not an issue. It’s more an attitudinal change.”
Senior manager Galumalemana Georgina Bonin supports Ms Noble. “Nileema has been the first Resident Representative who has been brave enough to look at our Integrated Work Plan and say hang on, instead of working on 20 objectives which is so unrealistic, cut it down to five,” said Galumalemana.
“And it was very specific and combined the management side (operations) and program side. On the program side we then said, climate change and gender are the two main focus areas. So it’s very specific and focused our work.”
Ms Noble also assuaged fears the UN office in Samoa is in danger of being closed and have it centralised at the UN Fiji office.
“I will do everything to keep this office open,” she said. “I am fighting for this office. I am fighting for the delivery of good quality program to support our community here.
“We are only as good as each other – Period. The UN system is being scrutinised as it should be. We have all these MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) ahead of us and Samoa is on track to achieve its MDG goals but some of the indicators show it’s going backwards and in that kind of environment we need to work harder.
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