Getting paid

I was shocked when I read, in an official government report about the state of education in the DRC, a statement deploring volunteer teachers in schools. Surely, that’s a wonderful example of public spirit to bolster the standard of education?

But no, it’s another example of how the public service has collapsed. This needs some explanation. There are teachers who are on the official payroll of the state – registered civil servants you could call them. But because central government will not or cannot enrol enough teachers to fill the need, individual schools also employ their own teachers. Such teachers are considered official employees and have to be paid from school fees – this in a country where primary education is officially free. But even with these additional teachers, there may be a need for more, or if there isn’t, head teachers can often be persuaded or even bribed to make a position available. These are the so-called volunteers. How do they survive? They use the children to till their fields, in class time; they get token allowances from the school fees; they extort bribes from pupils in return for giving high marks in tests and exams, and so on. Quite simple really.

Much the same system has developed in the hospitals and clinics. In that case it is not pay per term, but pay per treatment. There are horrible stories of surgeons breaking off an operation to demand more money from the relatives before they will finish it, and midwives refusing to deliver a breach baby without a special bonus.

The pay system in the military is even more unreliable. In their case wages are channelled down from the senior officers. In other words the generals receive the bulk payment, and it is up to them to distribute it among their troops. So it’s not surprising that generals often pretend to their men that the money “hasn’t arrived”, or that they only received part of the money.

Of course, the jobs which are most competed for are the police and the customs, as they can extract the most money from people. I heard recently that recruits in Indonesia must pay $5000 to be accepted as a policeman: money well spent when you consider the lifelong income that such a position provides. In the DRC the uniform is greatly cherished: when a policeman dies his brother or son takes the uniform and passes himself off as a policeman (without having to pay a bribe to be enrolled as one).

A colleague got a shock recently when they were paying out living allowances after a course she had been presenting. The recipients, without any sense of wrongdoing, immediately shared half their allowance with the senior officer, sitting on the platform. When she tackled them about it afterwards, they explained that he had nominated them for the course, so, of course, had to receive some of the benefits. 50% – that was the deal.

She had another story about a training course. This was a six week course to be held at a very remote police training centre, so they had to buy all their provisions in Kinshasa and take them down by lorry. The staff doing the buying were insistent that it was essential to take a cat with them to prevent rats eating all the food. They found one for her, at $50.

How was she to put a cat down in the books? In the end she decided that she would pay for it from her pocket, but got the price down to $30.

The cat did its job, and she felt that the suggestion might have been a sensible one.

When the course was over, and they were packing everything up to return she asked where the cat was. “Ah, Madam,” came the reply, “we were hungry.”