A strike by local workers in the world’s biggest United Nations peacekeeping force took hold on Friday, cutting off power and radio broadcasts from the mission headquarters in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
About 100 striking daily hire employees were gathered on the second day of a protest over pay and conditions outside the Kinshasa premises of the UN Observer Mission in DRC (Monuc), where UN police and troops barred access.
The compound was darkened by a power cut, with no supplies from the back-up generator, and the Okaki radio station, usually the most widely listened-to broadcaster across the DRC, went off the air in Kinshasa.
Several hundred Congolese staff on local contracts, as well as daily hires, began the strike, the first of its kind since Monuc was founded in 1999 on Thursday after pay talks collapsed.
“It’s the first time since the radio started [in 2002] that we’ve been off air for so long,” an Okapi journalist said.
Talks resumed on Thursday when Monuc’s administration expressed a “genuine will to arrive at a satisfactory resolution of any differences”, but stressed budget constraints and said some issues raised “pertain to the United Nations system in general”.
A labour official representing employees on Friday said that while talks went on, “we’ve urged the local statute staff to go back, but people are so angry that it’s difficult”.
Some progress had been made, including a plan to take the talks to the main headquarters in New York over the next few days, where wages, grades and social benefits will be discussed, according to the official, asking for anonymity.
Monuc consists of more than 19Â 000 peacekeeping troops, military observers, police, UN volunteers, and civilian staff deployed across Africa’s third largest nation stretching from the Atlantic coast in the west to the Great Lakes region in the eastern centre of the continent.
These forces, with contingents from all over the world, helped see through democratic elections last year under a new constitution, but face a huge task in helping to rebuild a nation ravaged by war. — AFP