{"id":26425,"date":"2016-06-28T02:06:03","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T02:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/amisom-troops-miss-monthly-stipends\/"},"modified":"2016-06-28T02:06:29","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T02:06:29","slug":"amisom-troops-miss-monthly-stipends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/amisom-troops-miss-monthly-stipends\/","title":{"rendered":"Amisom troops miss monthly stipends"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Uganda has already threatened to pull its troops out of Somalia.}<\/p>\n

African Union troops in Somalia have not been paid allowances for more than five months, as the effects of funding cuts by the European Union bite.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the EU said it had not released the money to the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) due to complex approval procedures that had resulted from a constrained budget.<\/p>\n

Mr Gary Quince, the head of the EU Delegation to the AU, told the Nation that a shortage of funds was the reason behind a pile of unpaid allowances.<\/p>\n

\u201cFunding cuts means there is a shortage and that has taken time to get the necessary approvals to release the money,\u201d the diplomat said from Addis Ababa.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt means decision-making takes long but we hope to get funds in a couple of months.\u201d<\/p>\n

The EU is the main financier of Amisom, committing about \u20ac1.2 billion (Sh133.85 billion) since 2007.<\/p>\n

About half of that, \u20ac575 million (Sh64 billion) has been used to cover the forces\u2019 allowances, costs for the police component of the mission and international and local civilian staff salaries.<\/p>\n

Early this year, the EU cut that funding by 20 per cent citing a constrained budget and new security needs.<\/p>\n

Those cuts were to take effect from this month, but it has not released any money. It is supposed to be paying Sh224 million every month.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe expect to reach an agreement with the AU by September, after which the payment will be backdated to January,\u201d Mr Quince said.<\/p>\n

The European bloc cited budgetary approvals, but the BBC on Monday reported that lack of accountability on the part of Amisom was behind the funding delay.<\/p>\n

An EU source told the BBC that the six-month payment was being withheld over \u201caccounting issues\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Amisom head of Amisom Francisco Madeira told the BBC that the correct papers to account for the last tranche released by the EU had been submitted.<\/p>\n

Sources say the EU wants some contingencies in Amisom to account for money allocated in previous disbursements before any new funding is released.<\/p>\n

{{Efforts slowed down }} <\/p>\n

Uganda has already threatened to pull its troops out of Somalia.<\/p>\n

Last evening, Kenya Defence Forces spokesman David Obonyo said the soldiers had no problem with their allowances.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur troops are getting their allowances and if there were any issues, we would be the first people to know,\u201d Colonel Obonyo told the Nation by telephone.<\/p>\n

An Amisom soldier is entitled to $1,028 (Sh103,828) every month. In the case of the KDF, the government deducts an administration fee of $200 (Sh20,200), meaning every serviceman takes home $828 (Sh83,628).<\/p>\n

When the EU cut the budget by 20 per cent, every soldier lost about $160 (Sh16,160) of the basic allowance. This shortage has affected operations.<\/p>\n

Last week, a senior US military officer told his country\u2019s senate that AU troops were not battling Al-Shabaab as effectively as was the case in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past six months or so, there\u2019s been a little bit of a slowdown on the initiative of forces that are provided to Amisom from countries like Uganda, Burundi and Ethiopia,\u201d Lt-Gen Thomas Waldhauser said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe expect activity to increase across the region during Ramadhan,\u201d he told the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is considering his nomination as head of US Africa Command (Africom).<\/p>\n

Col Obonyo said he could not determine the situation with other troop contributing countries, but insisted that the momentum against Al-Shabaab had not slowed down.<\/p>\n

The KDF, with 3,664 troops in Somalia, is part of the 22,000-strong mission created in 2007 to help stabilise the war-torn country. Uganda has the highest contingent of 6,223 troops, Burundi (5,432), Ethiopia (4,395) and Djibouti (2,000).<\/p>\n

\"Kenya<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Uganda has already threatened to pull its troops out of Somalia.} African Union troops in Somalia have not been paid allowances for more than five months, as the effects of funding cuts by the European Union bite. On Monday, the EU said it had not released the money to the African Union Mission in Somalia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2461],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-26425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-daily-nation"],"bylines":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26425"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=26425"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=26425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}