By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, March 29 -- When the UN in Haiti rented two luxury ships to house its staff after the earthquake there, various UN officials told Inner City Press that it was a good use of UN money. The UN Development Program, for example, told Inner City Press that
“the UN needed to find quickly accommodations to handle the surge of UN personnel coming in to the country...The accommodations were procured by WFP for the benefit of the UN system. The cost recovery from WFP is being calculated.”
But now an audit by the UN's own Office of Internal Oversight Services has found that the UN system lost at least $600,000 on the deal that it had not recouped. Click here for the audit, see Page 13:
Special measures authorized for the crisis response in Haiti (AP2010/510/01).
“...the Organization had paid for services related to staff accommodation in a passenger ship, including $600,000 for fuel charges, which were not fully rendered or were discontinued during the contractual period. Owing to the nature of the contract, which had been based on an all-inclusive rate, there was unfortunately no legal basis for recovery of the amount by the United Nations.
The Department of Field Support explained that the hiring of the passenger ship had been an exceptional action for which there was a limited precedent within the Department and stated that it had made a record of the issues encountered, which would serve as lessons learned, to be applied to any future cases involving similar requirements.”
Pretty expensive lesson. We could have said and did say it from the beginning: for the UN system to rent The Love Boat sent the wrong message, and ended badly. But will there be any accountability? Watch this site.
