The UN Migration Agency, which has been toughly competing with the US foreign aid cuts, has begun to sort more largely, making an impact around the fifth employees at its Geneva headquarters, stated by the employees on Friday.
The fresh cut for migration in the international organization is expected to affect at least 20 percent of the current headquarters employees, according to several sources familiar with the situation.
“This would mean more than 200 employees. I believe it is more,” a current IOM employee told AFP on the condition of anonymity.
The news came a few weeks after the United Nations Agency, which appointed about 22,000 people at the end of last year, sent a pink slip to some 3,000 employees.
They were among about 5,000 people who were working with the US refugee rehabilitation program, which has been stopped by President Donald Trump’s administration.
“I can’t really describe the mood,” said the employee.
Earlier this week, IOM’s media department employees were “announced for 15 minutes individual meetings (for them) that they were dismissed”, which “turned into meetings less than five minutes”, said the employee.
People were “coming out crying”.
A former employee, who even asked not to be nominated, said that “dozens of employees” received notice on Thursday, “and much more”, “The entire functional units have been cut off”.
‘Necessary adjustment’
According to sources inside, the IOM’s partnership program and its information and communication technology section were among the hard-hit divisions.
Contacted by AFP, IOM did not confirm the fresh trimmed limit.
But a spokesperson admitted that the agency was “making necessary adjustments, including proportional and balanced workplace deduction and operational capacity”.
The spokesperson said, “We have deep impact on the two communities that we serve and are serving our employees, and we are closely monitoring these changes and are sure that our capacity is fit for purpose.”
An existing employee said that informal internal communication was being sent to the headquarters employees, informing the employees that people with fixed -term contracts would be allowed to go in June, while other contract types would be given a minimum of 30 days notice.
Following Trump’s campaign to eliminate American foreign aid contribution, the latest retrench has put the entire human community in a telpin.
Traditionally, the sudden-faced IOM on funding by the country given by the country has particularly hit the IOM.
‘Anger’
The agency, which serves more than 280 million migrants globally, is relying on the United States for more than 40 percent of its annual budget.
Almost all its funding comes as a voluntary contribution to specific programs, meaning that a donor that stops the flow of cash can rapidly cripping an entire program, as with the cooperation of IOMs with the US Refugee Admission Program (USRAP).
“We have to make some difficult decisions about employees really because we can’t pay just employees when we are not really paying for our work,” IOM Director General Amy Pope told AFP recently to an interview.
Meanwhile, IOM employees expressed anger over the manner in which the trimmed, a staff member charged that he appeared targeting “mostly junior posts”.
Meanwhile, the staff were sending a video around a video on Friday during the Pope’s visit this week, during a visit to Guatemala this week, showing the team dancing happily with the team.
“People are being dismissed while doing DG dancing,” an employee said an employee who shared the video.
“We are absolutely angry!”
(Except for the headline, the story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is published by a syndicated feed.)
