So, finally, a bit more on the budget issues here in Mongolia-land.
I’ve mentioned the shortfall before, and it’s shaping up to about $18 million. I believe every post has been asked to make across-the-board 10-15% cuts in their finances, and this is making things interesting, given how expensive it is to get people together here – and prices are only getting worse. I heard yesterday that the taxi ride from the airport to the center of UB is up to like 15,000 tugriks – over the summer I could get as low as 7,000.
Our support office has had to lay off 2 people, postal mailings have been generally discontinued and replaced with a small communications allowance, the 2 inservice trainings have been cut down to one with fewer days to cover all the same topics. I have heard anecdotally that this year office staff won’t get a cost-of-living salary increase unless the budget improves – the money was instead used to give volunteers who needed it a bit of a living allowance increase. Due to medical decisions, it looks like there will be no volunteers being able to get in for a regular visit – or whatever – to the capital until Close of Service. I hope the training schedule gets changed for the next batch, as keeping it the same means that for your last 20 (or so, out of 27) months of service you never get to come in to UB for until Close of Service on PC’s dime. For a site like mine, that means having about $100 to take the bus roundtrip or an exorbitant $450 to fly roundtrip. I do like being out at site though, as long as I can occasionally get some brown sugar or oats.
Next year’s training will be moved to be closer to the capital to save money, and it’s likely its mid-training gathering for training will be eliminated and the training itself will be shortened by about 10%. I’m sure we’ll make do, but I wonder about language teachers and whether the veterans will make the move elsewhere temporarily. Mongolian is considered a pretty difficult language – for reference, among non-Latin languages, it’s less difficult than Mandarin Chinese or Arabic, but more difficult than Russian, Greek, or Swahili. As it is when we come out we have a grasp of survival language and continue to learn throughout service. So I’m a bit worried about how cutting out a decently sized chunk of full-immersion will pan out.
Anywho, this isn’t my post’s fault, or PC’s even. It a general lack of funding and everyone, both in DC and abroad, has to cut corners. Too bad there aren’t really corners to cut…
Some volunteers have been discussing how the next administration may change things, even with the economy being as it is. For comparison, something like 200 times this is being spent on the War on Terror extra funding this year (doesn’t include other Dept. of Defense allocations). So, maybe you all can help.
We’ve set up this website to generate letters to mail to their representatives. For the simplest case all you have to do is enter your zip, then at the end copy and paste a bit. Or you can get fancier…I’m not going to complain. It looks up info on the representatives and adds references to their Peace Corps service (if they served) or their ability to change the budget (if they’re on the Appropriations Committee). So please check it out. The site is Fund Peace Corps.
Tags: budget, mongolia, peace corps
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