UNITED NATIONS, March 29 -- While the UN Capital Master Plan lurches forward, some are left behind. On fifth floor of the Secretariat building last week, the hallway was full of rolling carts of medical files.
Weeks ago, the UN Medical Service, embroiled in a scandal of doctors without U.S. licensed signing out controlled substances to themselves, moved out to Second Avenue and 42nd Street, "above the liquor store," as it's known.
But the contractor had made the shelves for medical records too small. So so the records stayed in an office empty but for the X-ray unit. This apparently can't be moved "above the liquor store." It will be buried in the UN's third sub-basement.
Also on the fifth floor, the UN Staff Union hasn't even been told where they will finally move to. They were offered a minuscule space in the Alcoa Building on 48th Street; this offer may have been withdrawn.
This despite a blustery ultimatum from the Capital Master Plan, that if journalists don't relinquish their offices on the fourth floor by March 31, their files will be thrown out. If the Staff Union one floor above is any indication, the April 1 deadline is false. We shall see.
In terms of the forced move of UN correspondents to cubicles that initially came equipped with security cameras above them monitored by the UN -- the "no whistleblower zone," Inner City Press dubbed it -- now the UN wants to begin charging even for an inside-the-UN phone.
Since these allow correspondents to call and cover the UN's work in the field, from Congo to Timor Leste, one wonders if it's smart. But this UN must know what it's doing, monitoring and making things more difficult for independent journalists.
The Secretariat, Staff Union officials complain, has been trying to divide and conquer. While two officials have been released from day to day UN work to perform Union functions, the second vice president remains employed in the forestry unit of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs. She wants and applies for promotions, setting up a conflict of interest in her Union work.
Records indicate that she came into UN service "through the back door," seconded by Brazil and then somehow "regularized." She has accused Union president Steven Kisambira of being an emperor; he has responded by putting on a emperor-like hat. And so it goes at the UN.
Footnote: to give credit where credit is due, for the move of the Security Council down to the old Conference Room 4 in the General Assembly building basement, work went on over the weekend. By Monday morning, if for example the Council wanted to meet about the subway bombings in Moscow, they could.
A visit Monday morning by Inner City Press found that the flags were set up where the Vienna Cafe used to be. The consultations room was in old Conference Room 5. And the horseshoe table was in place, raised the mezzanine cheap seats, with a replica painting behind.
"We busted a nut," a CMP official said. Why not for those left behind in the Secretariat? And how is the Council going to act when the UN's Security Council Affairs has been relegated out to Third Avenue in the so called Teachers Building of TIAA-CREF? There appears to be dissension in that office. Watch this site.
