By Bida Elly David
Barely three months have elapsed; President Salva Kiir again fired Athian Diing Athian as the commissioner general of National Revenue Authority (NRA).
Athian was appointed in June to lead the National Revenue Authority, replacing Patrick Mugoya.
Prior to his appointment, Athian had served as the National Minister of Finance in 2021, where he was also fired a year after his appointment.
Now, he is again shown the exit door before fully accomplishing his manifestoes
During takeover as the NRA boss, Athian promised to transform the shape of the institution with other financial entities to improve revenue collections.
He had also promised to transform the tax department into a digitalized platform as well as increase the Country’s non-oil revenue collection to SSP 40 Billion Monthly.
Athian formerly laid a strategy to improve the capacity of National Revenue Authority staff and limit the waste of resources abroad.
Though he vowed to take robust steps to ensure the NRA strengthens domestic taxation and catches a lot of taxpayers in the private and public sectors, all that has passed into the wind.
However, economic analyst, Abraham Malieth expresses disapproval of the frequent changes in government institutions.
He suggests that the head of the NRA should have been given a chance to exercise his profession before being relieved.
He added that the culture of frequent changes within the public sector has led to under-performance.
“It seems to have become now an issue where every new minister brings his own team and I think we need to review that by putting the performance first with the function of time,” he said.
“It is very important to give professionalism a chance. Are we doing kingship of professionalism? If we are doing professionalism, everyone needs to be given a chance to understand the job,” he said.
Another economic Analyst, Abraham Matoch, who is also the Vice Chancellor of Dr. John University argued that the recent changes in the financial institutions were done at a critical time when the Country needs transformation.
Economist Abraham described the recent institutional changes as instability in the financial entity.
“At the moment, the changes are instability by themselves to the National Revenue Authority and the Central bank,” Matoch said.
“I have nothing to comment really now. As I said, I cannot go further to comment for now. Any critical changes in a silent institution like the revenue is totally an instability to the economy as I said,” he stated.
Former Commissioner General Athian was axed together with the Governor of the Central Bank.