May 7, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – The Central Bank of Sudan (CBS) has denied reports that it had dismissed its staff members from the region of South Sudan as the latter hurtles towards independence in July.

FILE - An official leaves after a news conference presenting Sudan’s new currency at the Central Bank headquarters in Khartoum July 16, 2011 (Reuters)

Sudan’s top financial authority, CBS, operates two semi-autonomous branches in the north and the south, as established by the 2005’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which ended nearly half a century of intermittent civil wars between the country’s north-south halves.

Also under the CPA, the south voted almost unanimously in a referendum held in January to secede from the north and form an independent state which is due to come to being on 9 July 2011.

In a press release dated 5 May, CBS denied the accuracy of a report published on 2 May by the Sudanese English daily newspaper Citizen, as copied from Sudan Tribune, that the bank had delivered letters of termination to southern job holders.

The said report was carried by Sudan Tribune on 30 April, citing another report published four days earlier by the pro-government website Sudan Media Center (SMC).

Quoted in the press release, CBS’s assistant governor for administration and services Mohamed Ali Al-Shaykh said the bank had not terminated the service of any southern employees, whether working at CBS’s headquarters or any of the bank’s branches in northern Sudan.

“What happened instead,” Al-Shaykh added, “is that a decision was issued to relocate southern staff members from the headquarters and branches in north Sudan to Southern Sudan’s Central Bank (SSCB) in the region’s capital Juba and its branches in the south.”

Al-Shaykh revealed that the decision to relocate southern staff members was made in response to a request by the SSCB to expedite the transfer of southern employment cadres as SSCB prepares to become fully autonomous ahead of South Sudan independence.

The bank’s release noted that the assistant chairman of SSCB’s chairman sent a letter to CBA in April 2011, requesting the transfer to the south of 37 employees mentioned in a list approved by the SSCB’s chairman Aliga Malok.

According to Al-Shaykh, the decision was a standard procedure within the same institution, adding that CBS and its branches in the north and the south was “still one entity and will remain so until the [CPA’s] transitional period is over and post-independence arrangements are carried out.”

North and South Sudan are currently engaged in talks aimed to thrash out a backlog of issues related to the bifurcation of the country, including citizenship, assets, shares of oil revenues and Nile Water.

The two sides recently agreed to jointly seek forgiveness of the country’s hefty external debt, but they remain deadlocked over other issues, particularly the status of the hotly-contested, oil-producing region of Abyei.

South Sudan is expected to end circulation of the Sudanese pound and introduce its own currency after independence.

Recently, south Sudan legislators serving in the country’s National Assembly were denied participation in the August House.

(ST)