18 jobs on the line due to lack of Govt funding

EIGHTEEN short-term contract staff from the National Energy Authority (NEA) are facing the prospect of losing their jobs when their contracts end on Jan 6 because of a lack of funding to pay their salaries, an official says.
NEA executive manager for the corporate division Samuel Petau told The National yesterday that these were qualified workers engaged in the setting up of the authority.
The workers are owed more than K500,000 in salaries but were not paid for six months due to cash flow issues.
They (workers) had given a petition to the Department of Treasury earlier this month to release Cabinet approved funding for the authority to cater for their salaries and operational expenses.
It is understood K5 million was approved for the authority and from that only K2 million was released however that money could not be accessed from the Department of Petroleum and Energy. The workers had requested in their petition for both the first K2 million and the balance of K3 million to be released, however only K700,000 was released.
The K700,000 has been used to pay the staff only 13 fortnights of their salaries.
Petau said the workers were told to wait for the balance of the money anytime until the close of accounts.
The National was previously told by Treasury that the NEA budget allocation went through the Department of Petroleum and Energy.