South Sudan President Salva Kiir fired longtime Finance Minister Salvatore Garang Mabiordit Wol in an executive order read on national television Wednesday.
Mabiordit is the eighth finance minister dismissed by Kiir since 2011. The country’s new finance minister is Athian Diing Athian.
Kiir also fired Erjok Bullen, acting commissioner of the National Revenue Authority, and Chol Deng Thon Abel, head of the Nile Petroleum Corporation, or Nilepet, the country’s institution overseeing oil production.
According to Jok Madut Jok, co-founder and former director of the Juba-based Sudd Institute, changing ministers will not solve the country’s economic crisis.
“But it is not just about changing faces,” he said. “It is particularly about building institutions of the nation. If it were a nation where institutions count, there is no way we can be convinced if so-and-so steals money. And yet at the end of the day, they walk away with their misdeeds and mistakes.”
Mabiordit said last week his ministry did not have the money to pay government workers who have been waiting for paychecks since April. He was summoned earlier in September by the National Assembly’s business committee to explain why the civil servants had not been paid.
Mabiordit told lawmakers that the COVID-19 lockdown, coupled with the devastated global economy, affected crude oil prices and reduced revenue from South Sudan’s oil production.
South Sudanese on social media were satisfied with Kiir’s shakeup at the major financial and oil institutions.
