Juba City Deputy Mayor for Infrastructural Development, Thiik Thiik Mayardit has been accused of dictating to the Veterans Security Service (VSS) Company the wages and work conditions for employees.
This past week, Thiik Thiik Mayardit is said to have orchestrated a violent attack on two English ‘expatriates’/foreign managers at the VSS headquarters in Gudele in which the “expatriates” were severely beaten by more than twenty ‘thugs in uniform’
The company says men; members of the organized forces sent by Thiik Thiik broke into their premises, ransacked offices and beat up the two staff.
In response, Deputy Mayor Thiik Thiik Mayardit rubbished the accusations saying that, “My name was dragged into this saga with an intention to dodge responsibility of the issue at hand, my previous advocacy for workers’ rights with Insight Security and my blood relations with President Kiir.”
According to Thiik Thiik, VSS added him to the disputes to make him the “topic of discussion” and not their exploitation of workforce.
VSS a security company says it employees over 2,000 South Sudanese people. However, its employees were on strike this past week protesting a pay decrease which the company says was due to a gain by the South Sudanese Pounds against the United States Dollars.
Previously a guard was paid between 65,000 and 70,000 SSP, but in its recent revised salary structure, VSS now wants to pay between 45,000 and 50,000 SSP because of what the management calls “a fall in the dollar rate”
