Chairperson of South Sudan Anti-Corruption Commission, Ngor Kolong Ngor. (-)

The South Sudan Anti-Corruption Commission has been evicted from its office space due to an accumulated four-year rent, forcing its staff to work from their houses, the chairperson said.

Ngor Kolong Ngor decried that the eviction came after they were notified by the landlord to vacate the house by August 31, 2024.

However, Kolong failed to disclose the accumulated rental fee.

While this is not the first time the institution has faced inability to pay office rents, the official said they have now been forced to operate from their respective houses.

“We have more than four years now, we haven’t paid the rent and we are evicted from the premises,” he said in an interview with Eye Radio.

“We are working from our houses, everybody. I and the Executive Director, the DG, we are all working from home. We are not working from office because we didn’t pay the rent. The Ministry of Finance failed to give us money.”

“One of the landlords evicted us and gave us August 31st as the last day. Now we don’t have any place to work from and it’s been about four years since we didn’t pay the rent.”

Kolong said they have no choice but to coordinate their activities through phone calls and WhatsApp messages.

He is appealing to the Ministry of Finance and Planning to release the commission’s operational fund to enable them to return to office.

“We are using phones to coordinate our issues. We hope that everything will be okay and the government will return and give us our operations money and this is the hope we are relying on.”

In 2023, the Chairperson warned that the institution was on the verge of collapse and could be evicted from its headquarters anytime due to a lack of funding.

In June 2022, the landlord of the Anti-corruption Commission locked the institution’s premises after the anti-graft body failed to pay more than seven million pounds in rent arrears.