BADLY NEEDED REFORMS AND ADMINISTRATIVE CAPACITY-BUILDING IN PUNTLAND

February 2019

I am in Garowe, the Capital City of Puntland State of Somalia, staying in one of the decent hotes in town. In the hotel, I am annoyed by mosquito bites at night. I therfore opted for using mosquito net. This morning I woke up at 7 am. I had to come out of the hotel to renew my circulation permit for my 4-wheel drive vehicle. Soon I found myself in the hotel campound. The ground looked wet or strangely sweating. Visibility was almost zero. I asked someone whether it was raining overnight. He said, “not at all”.

I quickly got out of the hotel campound gate to get into the vehicle. The windshield was covered with fog and dew. I used wipers to clear my view. Most people walking around were school students going to classes. They seemed to be shivering with cold, but unproperly dressed for the foggy wheather, instinctively thinking that it would get very hot before mid-day – a correct guess as it turned out.

I drove straight to the Ministry of Transport to find out the gate at campound was closed. The watchman told me that there was no electric power at Ministry, but he could let me in to find out that myself. I agreed and drove into the campound to find out many dust-covered and obviously long time ago abandoned motor-vehicles filling up one-third of the Ministry’s campound space. A few old men, supposedly retired from Somalia’s civil service idly loiterred around. Three young men were sitting on plastic chairs in the middle of the campound , busy with their smartphones. The doors to the offices were open, but there was no movement of people. By this time it was 8 am, but the Ministry seemed lifeless. I approached to the young men and I asked them, “How could I renew road stamp? “There is no electric power to do that”, one of them said. “Are you expecting the power to be back”, I asked. “No” said one man. “What is my option?”, I asked. “You should go to a check-point outside the city to try to get your sticker”, advised one man.

I drove to an entry check-point at Westend of the city on the highway to Galkayo. Ministry Office of on-land Taxation is located in badly cramped and poor squater-like huts. There is one office with inscription: Xafiiska Canshuurraha Berriga. I went inside to find two guys sitting on chairs at opposite side of a wooden table, playing cards at 8:15 am and a teenager behind a dust-covered computer monitor.

“Do you issue sticker-stamps for vehicles?”, I asked. “Yes, we do”, said the older guy playing cards. “Show your papers to that boy”, he directed. I handed my older receipts to the boy. ‘Ow! You owe money! He exclaimed. “Yes, I know. That is why I came here in the first place”, happy that here they have at least electric power and access to a computer terminal. While the teenager was processing my papers I looked around in the room. There were mattresses, dirty and coloured bedsheets pushed towards back-wall of the room and behind the plastic chairs at two computer-terminals. There was a counter before the computers.

Finally, I happily paid off my dues and was off driving back to the City.

There is a lot to do in Puntland, and most importantly, to carry out deep administrative reforms and civil service capacity-building.