The officers were only carrying a letter from NA´s DPKO (Department of Peace keeping Operations), which mentioned that the two were appointed to the UNAMI mission office in Amman and were in possession of the two pistols.
They were released after a day´s interrogation and only after the UNAMI office, which did not even send someone to receive them, finally came to their rescue. The Jordanian authorities, however, seized the pistols and ammunition and let the two officers go only after making them sign a paper that said “if the weapons were not claimed within 14 days time, it will then be returned to NA directly.”
The officers´ nightmare did not end there. When they reached their duty station, they were told that the positions they were to take over had already been taken by a Jordanian lieutenant-colonel. The two were then sent for “training.” However, unaware and ill-informed as they were of the type of training required, one of them had to drop out as the training "required excessive exercises” with heavy back-packs.
After some initial medical check-up, he was deported back to Kathmandu on August 6. The other officer has now been appointed in Baghdad.
The two were also compelled to spend nine days in the camp in the same clothes they had arrived in as their luggage cargo handled by DHL did not arrive on time. They also did not receive any compensation for the nine days training time, and this had to be borne by the UN office.
This is only one example of Nepali officers headed for UN missions falling victim to poor handling both by their respective institutions and also by the agency concerned. In Nepal it is the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) which does both manpower and luggage handling for officers sent on various UN missions round the world. It is the job of the DPKO to see to it that such officers travel with all official documents.
Asked to comment, the UNDP office in Kathmandu said it is UNDP´s responsibility to look after the “ticket and notification.”
“UNDP´s role in the deployment of peace keepers is purely a logistical one,” Sangita Khadka, communications officer at UNDP, said. She added, “Specifically, on instruction of the DPKO, UNDP Country Offices make the necessary travel arrangements for staff to be deployed, with the minimum delay.”
“This means that based on DPKO´s instruction we arrange for their tickets and we notify DPKO of the itinerary once the ticket is purchased,” Khadka added.
UNDP claimed that it does not deal in luggage transfer, which is done by DPKO´s authorized clearing agent -- DHL. “We do not deal with any documentation or facilitation for their weapons and licenses,” Khadka told myrepublica.com.
“Those appointed as military observers and mission headquarters staff do not carry weapons on commercial flights,” a high-ranking NA officer said on condition of anonymity. He also said the NA does not deal directly with the ticketing and luggage transfer. He refused to divulge information about other cases of a similar nature.
Meanwhile, the UNDP operations department said that observers are given anywhere between $1,300 to $2,000 just for purchase of tickets for officers. But the travel agents usually issue tickets ranging from $500 to $600 (economy class) for observers posted in countries like Sudan, Haiti, Jordon, Congo, East Timor, Ivory Coast, Chad and Liberia.
The department also claimed that the funds are used as per the actual cost of the tickets and DHL bills the UN directly.
Last year alone, some 200 officers from the Nepal Police and Armed Police Force and another 150 from NA were sent as observers to various UN missions in those countries.
akanshya@myrepublica.com
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