The Qaranka online
By Dahir Alasow
13 Nov. 09

The salary of the officials in the transitional federal government is hitting the score while millions starve in country’s southern regions. Waagacusub media’s editor glances at the mysterious salaries of the overpaid but paralyzed ministers and their leaders in the transitional government. The president of the Transitional government, TFG, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, gets $90,000 USD dollars as salary, apart from his office expenses, petty cash and other miscellaneous funds.

In the UNDP’s payment letters confirm that the funds were intended to the office expenses, travel expenses and family.

The speaker of the Parliament, Sheikh Adan Madobe, who is number two in ranking, a charter wise, receives $70,000 dollars, which in the payment forms confirms that he shares with his deputies, Dalha and Boqorre.

The Prime Minister, Omar “Sharmaarke” Abdirashid Ali, the third in ranking as Charter wise, gets $70,000 also.

The three are the top three TFG officials based on the 4.5 clannish power sharing, but as their positions, the money is not as much, but what about their subordinates?

The idle ministerial nominees of 39 posts receive as highest salaries as $12,000 while above 4 Million people are starving in the country. The money is described as the budget of the ministries but goes directly to the pockets of the ministers who have no activity so far except very few of them including the interior minister, the finance minister, the foreign affairs minister and so on.

The ministries have neither staff nor offices, but only laptops, and represent the name of the ministry as whole with the laptops and a file.

The monthly salary of the 39 ministers of the TFG makes $468,000 a month, while the 550 parliamentary members who get minister’s salary divided by ten ($1,200) each as salary, makes $660,000. When added with the $220,000 of the top three officials, the president, speaker and the premier, it makes a total sum of $1,348,000 that goes into the pockets of the TFG’s company shareholders. The world respects them as the leaders, parliamentarians and ministers of the people of this poorest nation in the world, but fed up with the daily massacre by the militant groups of Alshabab and Hezb al-Islam, The African Union forces and the TFG’s militias.

The people living under tree, women giving birth in the streets while running from the horrific massacre, children dying in dozens for malnutrition or hunger, the mentally washed young men killing in rampage and assassinations and the world's attention towards this, it shows a bleak image.

Alshabab’s brutal executions, hand amputations, cross cutting, the death squad shootings and the intimidations left all the mindful intellectuals from the country who were harassed by the awful, non Somali, acts by Alshabab and its sister in militancy but foe in politics, Hezb al-Islam. UNDP pays 39 ministers of whom neither of the can go to his home town or the regions they represent in the TFG, while they left the public behind the time they are in the highest humanitarian crisis.

But the TFG masters and their subordinate so called ministers have never tried to donate a 50kgs packed of maize for the starving nation that they claim representing.

Alshabab and Hezb al-Islam has their own agenda to make Somali the fear republic, which somehow, they achieved, but the question is what the role of the international community is?

Even the short man can see the sky, the world watches the onslaught situation of Somalia, but has no interest in it.

The World’s war crime prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, flew over Somalia several times this year only, he visited Uganda and Kenya and he is putting efforts on the Kenyan issues relation to the post election violence, but he never mentioned these words, Somalia, Alshabab, Hezb al-Islam, TFG or AMISOM

Ocampo’s attempt to deny Somalia, and run after Kenya’s gave chance to Alshabab to decorate mutilated parts of (Hands and Legs) human bodies in the business posters in Mogadishu’s main market Bakara.

The killers of the starving nation will go to hell, the masterminds will fail and the national of pan Somalia will return one time, we all wish it by heart.

Dahir Alasow: A senior Radio and TV journalist, a leader of a press watchdog ASOJ and the editor of waagacusub.com, is the outstanding commentator that criticizes the political parts including Alshabab and Hezb al-Islam, he is "the truth pen" that writes only for the public interest and defends the truth.

Qaranka online