Statute of Limitations : Ken Gibbs

   The Beast of Bodmin Moor

By definition, if you are an XUNICEF member, the probability is that you were programme staff until you left of your own volition; or you were ‘dumped’ using that wonderful device of abolishing the post of a difficult staff member; or if you were separated on retirement. In my case, I was made to take early retirement in mid-1996, and my separation date was end of June, 1996. Remember this date.

UNICEF had had something like a year’s warning of my impending departure, so you’d think that they would want to ensure that I had paid all outstanding dues just before I left. Not so. I think I was told that whatever was found to be owing would be deducted from my finally salary and separation payment. I assumed that that would be around six months from when I left the organisation, but I was wrong, so wrong.

17 months after separation, I was told that US$ 7,599.27 was to be deducted from my final payment which seemed to have waited for 17 months to be paid. What efficiency ! Naturally, I was expecting something between US$ 250 and US$ 300, so to be told that that I was going to have to refinance UNICEF with US$ 7,600, came as a rude shock. The announcement came from New York, so I immediately wrote to them asking for details in a memo which I copied to my last duty station as I reasoned that that was where the last dues had probably originated. The memo was dated 23rd February, 1998, some 20 months after separation, at a time when I was working on the Food for Oil Programme in Northern Iraq which had poor connectivity with the outside world, so getting historical data was impossible.

I returned home briefly in May, 1998, and found that there had been no acknowledgement of my February memo, so I immediately copied the rebuttal letter to the Comptroller in NYHQ dated 19th May, asking why nobody appeared even to have read my memo ? The response from New York Admin on May 29th indicated that despite my protests, UNICEF had deducted the full US$ 7599.27 without any explanation. Re-reading the text of the letter, it seemed that some staff were being very economical with the truth.

I demanded proof of what items were outstanding; in what amounts, exactly; in which duty stations they had been ‘incurred’. I received a sheaf of papers which showed that the earliest ‘debts’ I had allegedly incurred were from 1989, which was 4 duty stations before separation. An examination of the items showed them to be chaotic where I was being debited for items which the records showed were not even for me. There was an increasingly testy exchange of memos between myself and Admin in New York where I challenged them most directly. They take the salary but seem to think they don’t have to do anything to justify the money ?

When I get worked up, beware ! I elected to go for the nuclear option of writing to both The UN Legal Division and The UNICEF Comptroller. It is of some interest that while I got an almost immediate acceptance from The Comptroller, at the same time, I did not receive any response from the Legal Division. It is to be assumed that there was a telephone call between the two offices indicating that this sort of adverse publicity was unlikely to bring credit to UNICEF, and would she kindly. . . . . . .?

Then I received a number of memos saying that I had been credited a part of the US$ 7,599 in smaller and smaller units till my alleged debt amounted to a shade under US$ 1,600, which is rather less than the US$ 7,600 originally specified. I had so many other things going on during the consultancies I was doing for UNICEF – yes UNICEF – that I felt that I should call it a day. However, I made a demand of the Comptroller that any further alleged unpaid bills that would arrive from the date when I accepted the US$ 1,600 should be handled by UNICEF itself and I should be held free from any further alleged debts. I have the Comptroller’s written full agreement to my terms on this; and I keep it available for whoever has to process Probate when finally I exit this world – just in case. I wonder if it was my introduction of the question as to what is the Statute of Limitations in the UN ? The Comptroller never answered this question. I wonder why not ?

A goodly chunk of the allegedly outstanding dues were for travel ‘advances’, mostly from the six months work I did in Bhutan at the behest of the then Regional Director, Karl-Erik Knutsson. When he called for me, I was asked to buy my own airplane ticket which would be refunded on arrival. It wasn’t. Actually, it was owing to me and somehow the esteemed bookkeepers booked it in the wrong column. In fact, while in Bhutan, I made two internal trips – both official and requested by the Bhutanese Minister of Health and endorsed by the Representative – which sums seem also to have been booked as owing to UNICEF, rather than to myself. All of these travel items were covered by the appropriate TA (for the uninitiated this means Travel Authorisation, that ‘implement’ beloved by GFSS and PrOMS, and without which, nothing happens).

Of considerable interest in the ‘documentation’ which the Finance Section in NYHQ provided to me as proof of non-payment, and all of which had multiple digital references which would be meaningless to anyone who was not in possession of the approximately 300 pages of AIs and FIs (for the uninitiated, these are ‘Admin Instructions’ and ‘Finance Instructions’) usually kept in the Representative’s office and only available for viewing on request. Their records, so carefully indexed with meaningless numbers did have one advantage. All entries had a three letter country code allowing me to know from which office the alleged dues originated. Remember that I noted that I had expected any outstanding dues probably to come from my last duty station ? NYHQ’s finance records did not show a single unpaid bill from that duty station.

Here we have an organisation reputedly being the highest paid civil service in the world, unable to employ competent bookkeepers to list items in the right columns ? Really ? This begs the question as to what the Office of Internal Audit knew about this non-system ?

Hands up any XUNICEF colleagues who received similar separation treatment. . . . .as there must be many, many of them. I cannot believe that I, alone, was singled out for special attention.