PRESS BRIEFING BY UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT
Press Briefing
PRESS BRIEFING BY UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT
19960402
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY
Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali is committed to achieving total savings of about $250 million in the current biennium, Under-Secretary-General for Administration and Management Joseph E. Connor told correspondents on Monday afternoon, 1 April, at a Headquarters press briefing. He said the savings would come in three phases. The first was in the form of the $98 million savings the Secretary-General had included in his budget proposals last year. The second would be by cutting General Service posts, amounting to $50 million; and the third was an additional $104 million savings also legislated as the General Assembly approved the budget last December.
What the Assembly had done, Mr. Connor said, was to give a focus and a timetable for saving the $250 million, an amount that was about equal to the increase in the Organization's costs due to inflation and currency rate fluctuations. The decline of the United States dollar in relation to the Swiss franc, for instance, had presented a significant added cost for the Organization since many salaries and costs were paid in Swiss francs. The United Nations now had a zero-growth budget in nominal terms. The report the Secretary-General submitted today (document A/C.5/50/57) was to shed light on how the second and third phases of the savings would be achieved.
The Secretariat, Mr. Connor said, saw the savings as a chance to engage in what national governments had been doing in the last few years -- living with no growth and doing more with less. It also intended to achieve the $154 million in cost reductions immediately. Agreement had been reached between the financial and the programme managers on where cuts would be made. The managers had been asked by the Secretary-General to show what they would do to enable the Secretariat to come up with the mandated reductions.
A complementary process started by the Secretary-General consisted of efficiency reviews to improve the Organization's performance, efficiency and activities, he continued. They were an integral part of plans for a comprehensive management reform by the Secretary-General in the context of his overall management plan. The reviews were meant to achieve both better value and better service by finding ways to achieve more or the same amount of output with less resources. Apart from finding less costly ways of working, the reviews will seek ways to improve the Organization's services, leading to better performance and higher quality. Each department manager was asked to identify issues that could be simplified, consolidated or restructured to deliver better programmes or service at less cost, something many governments had done. More than 300 issues had been identified and would be reviewed in the coming months.
Regarding the savings from various departments, the Under-Secretary- General said that the Department of Political Affairs, for instance, would cut from four to two the number of meetings of the Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters and of the Standing Committee on Security Questions in Central Africa. Disarmament fellowships would also be reduced from 25 to 15.
Referring to his own office, the Department of Administration and Management, Mr. Connor said that it would have to save about $43.5 million to $48 million. That would require the partial or total deferral of upgrades of the telecommunications systems and equipment in various conference rooms and support facilities, and major maintenance work with the exception of those related to legislation; code compliance and health and safety issues; a reduction in capacity to service meetings; and eliminating any capacity for unscheduled meetings. Other measures would include the restriction of document circulation in the Secretariat, limitation of document availability in conference rooms and the review of use of temporary interpreters and translators in order to lower temporary assistance costs.
The targeted savings of the Department of Public Information (DPI) would include the consolidation of products in order to eliminate duplication, he continued. For example, Development Business could be merged with the World Bank's International Business Opportunities service. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) would study the establishment of a wide area network (WAN) to improve communications and facilitate travel and administrative requests.
Giving further details on the savings to be achieved from conference servicing, Mr. Connor said that, while some 7,000 meetings were scheduled at the United Nations, only about 80 per cent were actually held. Staffing would now be adjusted to a level that anticipated a 10 per cent cancellation rate. That would mean less temporary assistance would be required. Such efforts could spread throughout the Organization.
Turning to the efficiency reviews, he said some 300 issues had been raised with the help of staff members.
The original budget the Secretary-General submitted to the Assembly had included proposals to eliminate about 200 posts. To save another $154 million, more staff reductions would have to be effected, with some services affected. The Secretariat had been able to achieve about half of the 800 vacancies that needed to be created from the 10,000 posts approved last year. Those had been created by staff volunteering for early retirement. A second buy-out programme started today would seek another 400 staff to vacate their posts voluntarily. If not all 400 could be vacated in that way, involuntary measures would be introduced. The Secretariat would provide outplacement and job search support for staff, as well as offer counselling. It would also ask host countries to extend the visas of those who might be laid-off.
Connor Press Briefing - 3 - 2 April 1996
Mr. Connor was asked whether he was concerned that some of the best of the Organization's staff might be the ones accepting voluntary severance, with adverse consequences for overall staff quality. He replied that he was not concerned. In such cases, the Secretary-General could use his discretion and reject requests for voluntary termination as he had done in the past. Moreover, the option of involuntary termination was also available. When posts were cut, affected staff would be placed in an overall pool from which they could be assigned elsewhere in the Organization or in missions. They could also be asked to carry out the work now being done by international contractual personnel. Voluntary terminations would provide the lion's share of the 800, though.
Asked if the Organization would not lose some institutional memory and what it would do about bad management, he said, "I was with my prior firm for 38 years and I guess I had a measure of institutional memory. But they seem to be doing quite well without me these days". But at the United Nations, "we have a problem of too long longevity. There are too many people in this Organization doing the same job for 20 years", he said, adding, "I think the problem is exactly the opposite from what you have just described". Mobility of staff was very important and it would be encouraged through the exercise. Efforts were being made to improve the skills of managers within the system.
Asked how many had accepted voluntary termination, Mr. Connor said that 400 had done so and about $15 million would be used to buy them out. With more people expected to leave, another $15 million would be sought through savings in the budget to allow for voluntary early separations. Depending on the length of stay, the base component of the severance pay given to a staff would be no more than 12 months' compensation. There was a discretionary 50 per cent add-on that would be given to a staff member. Also, if a staff left without a three-month notice, he would be paid for those months. It was hard to generalize how much each package would amount to, but $80,000 was a good average. About 400 staff had agreed, "with various degrees of finality on leaving the Organization", of which 290 had already done so.
In response to a question as to whether it was not a shame that 185 Member States could not come up with $2.6 billion, Mr. Connor said that once Member States voted a budget, they should pay their assessment to keep the Organization financially viable. They had adopted the budget by consensus and it was their treaty obligation to pay their dues. Meanwhile, he said, the financial position remained precarious, and the Secretariat would have to borrow from peace-keeping budgets to finance the regular budget by the end of June. The Organization would run out of cash at the end of December. The recent statement by the Russian Federation that it would pay $400 million in 1996 to the regular and peace-keeping budgets was welcome. The amount exceeded previously forecast payments. But its timing had not been firmed up to a point where it could be recognized in the forecast. Since the Russian Federation had paid up its regular budget assessments on Thursday, its other payments for peace-keeping budgets would be used to reimburse States for their
Connor Press Briefing - 4 - 2 April 1996
troop and equipment costs. These payments would not correct the shortfall under the regular budget, and the United Nations would end the year with a negative balance of about $400 million. "The ice-skating continues", he said.
Replying to a question as to how another 400 staff would be bought out and how the plan would be funded, Mr. Connor said he had offered staff a second programme of voluntary separation. The additional $15 million needed to pay for that would have to be found from savings. The 800 severances would cost about $30 million. "We are committed not to exceed the cap of $2,608 million: no add-ons, nothing extra."
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