South Sudan has suspended plans to charge foreign workers a 10,000 dollars work permit fee, the finance minister said after criticism that it would create a huge expense for aid organisations.
Stephen Dhieu Dau told a news conference in Juba the Ministry of Finance acknowledged these significant issues and steps were being taken to formulate the best way forward.
“The implementing agencies will continue with old rates charged,” he said.
Dau added that parliament was expected to repeal the legislation that approved the fee hike. The previous rate was 100 dollars per foreign worker.
War-ravaged South Sudan announced the 100-fold hike in the fee for foreign professionals in early March.
Most such workers in the young country are employees of humanitarian groups.
The world’s youngest nation has been embroiled in civil war since 2013, when President Salva Kiir fired his deputy Riek Machar, sparking a conflict that has increasingly split the country along ethnic lines.
In February, the UN declared that parts of the country were experiencing famine.
Nearly half the population, or about 5.5 million people is expected to lack a reliable supply of food by July.
The fighting has uprooted more than three million people. The UN said in a report in February that continuing displacement presented “heightened risks of prolonged (food) underproduction into 2018”. (Reuters/NAN)
