The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) of the U.N. General Assembly has called on the Organization to do more to avoid "egregious examples of waste" in such areas as the daily subsistence allowance to United Nations staff traveling on official business and the use of frequent flyer miles.
After scrutiny, the Representatives of the Committee agreed with the main thrust of the 20 proposals issued by Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon in his report on more effective utilization of resources for official United Nations air travel, which was introduced by Warren Sach, Officer-in-Charge of the Department of Management.
Reacting to both the proposals and the existing practices that they were intended to improve, delegations noted that some current policies and practices in the area of air travel were wasteful and even "disturbing," and welcomed proposed changes.
The report of the Secretary-General recommends spending the U.N.'s over $73 million airfare budget more efficiently. It also calls for scrapping the current policy of paying daily subsistence allowance to staff members traveling on official business even while they were in flight.
Instead, he proposed paying daily subsistence allowance beginning at the arrival of an official at his or her destination and ending the last night spent at that location. He also recommends, among other things, that frequent flyer miles gained as a result of official business not be used for personal travel, and that United Nations officials be encouraged to use such miles on official business travel. The report concluded on the basis of a study that creating a formal program for the management of frequent flyer miles for official travel was not cost-effective.
The Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), in a related report, agreed with the proposal to scale back the payments of daily subsistence allowance, noting that such a simple change could result in a savings of approximately $1.36 million.
The report of the Advisory Committee also expressed concern over the lack of sufficient detailed information provided in the Secretary-General's report, and called on him to submit an initial report to the Assembly's sixty-seventh session of his proposals for cost savings and the impact on worker productivity resulting from prolonged absences from the office while traveling.
Commenting on the reports, United States representative Stephen Lieberman said the U.N. had an obligation to ensure much more careful and common-sense use of finite travel resources.
The Committee is expected to reconvene next Friday to conclude the first resumed part of its sixty-sixth session.
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