In Myanmar, Local UNDP Staff Must Tithe To Get and Keep Jobs, Yangon Insiders Say
By Matthew Russell
Inner City Press
June 11, 2007
While those at UN headquarters, from auditors to journalists, have treated the 2007 saga of the UN Development Program in North Korea as a one-off anachronism of compromise to do business in a totalitarian state, similar issues exist, for example in Myanmar, also known as Burma.
At a June 6 press conference, UNDP's Associate Administrator Ad Melkert was asked by Inner City Press to address a relatively obscure media report of five staff fired in Myanmar for corruption. Mr. Melkert was evasive, saying he "could" describe how staff in that country are recruited, but then has declined to provide any further information.
In the beginning of what we hope to be a continuing inquiry, discussions with people knowledgeable about UN operations in Myanmar reveal a situation in which UN agencies are staffed by associates of that country's military government. As in North Korea, the payment of seeming salary is misused. One insider said, "at times, the UNDP had over 900 project staff on the various sub-projects of the HDI programs. The majority of these were required to pay 1-2 months of their annual salaries back into UNDP national staff in order to have these jobs."
As described, there are at least two poles (or "crime families," in one insider's account) within UNDP in Myanmar. The captains of the two networks are Mr. Tin Aung Cho and Mr. Hla Mying Hpu. It is through these pyramids of corruption that salaries are kicked-back.
