By Mohammed Dahir Ahmed

United Nations and International NGOs doe’s sterling job in helping Somaliland people in areas such as health, education, agriculture, water, sanitation etc.

As a nation, we should maintain the good ways we welcome to our country any organization helping our people by easing rules for opening offices, tax exemption for charitable goods and by guaranting the security of foreign nationals.

Nevertheless, such organizations do not always employ local talents and if they employ some of them employ local staff in unfavourable terms and do not protect their rights as needed. As always happens they recruit staff whom their qualifications are not missing in the country but actually in abundance. What sense does it make recruiting a B.S.C or M.S.C holder from an other country while local graduates from Asia, Africa and the national universities are full of in the country and most of them are unemployed.

In addition, such agencies engage with external consultants to deliver workshops, conduct research, and for program monitoring and evaluation (M&E). If the local consultants lack the necessary knowledge and expertise, it is understandable that they engage external consultants. However, it is shocking to see external consultant delivering a basic business planning, bookkeeping, and marketing workshop to a local business people through an interpreter. Are they telling us that there is no one in Somaliland who can deliver this; absolute rubbish.

Economic empowerment can best be achieved through jobs not aid and using Somaliland local talent not foreign staff. In addition employing local talents mitigates the problem of brain drain. Employing expatriate workers are often more expensive than Somaliland professionals, as always happens a B.S.C holder from East Africa may receive more than 70% of local staff salary plus housing, medical and holiday fare benefits.

To solve this problem I recommend the following points:

• The Government should make a basic requirement for any NGO or Foreign body working in Somaliland to hire Local professionals as longe as they are available in the country.

• The Parliament should pass and complete the labour laws governing this sector.

• Local consultants should establish their own associations and promote themselves by highlighting their capabilities such as their local knowledge, local contacts, and qualifications and experience.

• The labour department should be divested from the Ministry of health and labour because many people perceive that this Ministry deals only with health matters.

• The labour department should be independent department monitoring the situation of local staff working in international agencies in regards of their terms of employment, dispute settlement, utilization of local talents etc. People think that the Civil Service Commission (Haayada Shaqaalaha) is concerned with this matters. This commission is for the civil service who are the people work for the government not for those who work for NGOs and the private sector

• The Labour department should set the parameters, which the International agencies will compare against as far as the qualifications and expertise of the individuals they need are concerned.

By Mohammed Dahir Ahmed, Birmingham U.K