Moonlighters Cripple Ministries

It is nine in the morning when Rahmat stops his taxi outside the ministry of education and sprints into the building. He is already half an hour late for work, but that doesn't really matter.

Two minutes later, the 33-year-old, with a neatly-trimmed black beard and smart suit, is back behind the wheel of his yellow and white taxi and off into Kabul's morning rush in search of fares.

Rahmat is just one of thousands of phantom civil servants in Afghanistan. Although he signed in for his day's work at the ministry, like many of his colleagues he has no intention of spending any time there.

"The government pays me 50 US dollars a month," he told IWPR. "But taxi driving makes me 300 dollars a month.

"If the government raised my salary sufficiently, then I’d stop driving a taxi, but I can't afford to at the moment.”

Morale among Afghan government employees is low, mainly because of poor pay coupled with a recent scheme to review civil-service jobs at all levels.

Many employees do not bother turning up at all on Thursdays, officially a half-day.

Another education ministry employee, who did not want to be named, has a hand-cart business in central Kabul, transporting traders' goods around the city.

"The government wants us to work but it doesn't know what is going on," he said. "The managers who ought to know what their staff is doing are just as bad, and they’re absent half the time. No one wants to take on any responsibility.

"And no one cares about the staff. Rents in Kabul are incredibly high. I earn 60 dollars a month and my rent alone is 80 a month. Our children need food, clothing and education. No one can live on their salary alone. This is why I am forced to do private work.”

Nasir, 30, works for the interior ministry but spends most of his days buying and selling old clothes at a stall in a market near the Pul-e-Kheshti Mosque.

"Nine years ago my father passed away and now I have eight dependents to look after," he said. "I cannot afford to sustain myself on my staff salary. That is why sometimes I go in to work, and sometimes I don't.”

This attitude is creating major problems for people visiting government offices on official business.

Student Abdul Basir, 25, from Logar province, came to the education ministry to get his secondary school qualification verified in order to gain university admission.

"I’ve spent a month going back and forth to the ministry," he said. "Sometimes people are there, sometimes they aren’t. I don’t know what the working hours are supposed to be but no one sticks to them. All you hear are excuses.

"Everybody from the senior officials right down to the juniors seems to come in late, if at all.

"And just for signing a piece of paper, which is their job, they will ask for a sweetener. They say, 'Since I’m approving your business, you give me a sweetener, OK?'. They are just wasting people's time."

Safiullah Sobat, a press officer with the education ministry, admitted that some staff ran their own businesses during office hours.

"If the government wants its employees to fulfill their obligations better, then it should raise salaries,” he said. "But the head of each section should have control over the staff."

Mohammad Zahir Hasan, head of finance and administration at the ministry of culture and information, insisted, "If an employee is caught running a private enterprise when they should be working, he or she should be dismissed."

Kabul resident Sayed Alam, 38, has been trying to get a permit for a digital telephone from the communications ministry.

"For the past 11 days I have spent every morning at their office from nine until 11 trying to get the proper document," he said. "I get sent from office to office. Sometimes a clerk is missing and sometimes the director. Every day they tell me to come back tomorrow, and when I come back the next day I am told the same thing. God knows how much longer they will make me wait."

Mohammad Alam, a senior manager with the ministry of communications, blames low salaries for the high levels of absenteeism.

"Staff arrive late or they’re not in their offices. Instead of carrying out their duties they are doing private business deals," he said. "The president must know that if salaries are low, it creates an atmosphere where corruption thrives."

Farooq Wardak, the government’s director-general for administrative affairs, promised that the cabinet was looking into the salary question, "We are planning future salary rises as well as looking at staff educational standards with a view to introducing various training programmes."

Shahabuddin Tarakhil is an IWPR staff reporter in Kabul.