Today, 24 October 2008, one more local staff is fired. Euphemistically said: she faced redundancy. I will soon post her chronology here. As they did to all the other 'disobedient' staff before her, she was prohibited from the office like a criminal, was told not to approach office premise, to return all office properties and was given a list of benefit (i.e. money) she can have if she accept the redundancy decision. Exactly the same thing they did to others like me and my other two female colleagues last year and the year before (yeah, this criminalization of staff have been happening for two years now, and Oxfam GB Indonesia country office seemed to support this kind of practice by maintain it as a kind of SOP).

 

What make me sick about Oxfam GB Indonesia now is that they think they can buy everything with money, including people's dignity. We are not even talking about the ultra poor people out there yet, we are talking about its staff's dignity, ordinary people with aspiration to live in dignity. I wonder how much empathy can the organization give to its "beneficiaries" (hate this term but believe me, the bosses in this organization still enjoy the sense of being a 'saviour' for the poor by labelling the poor as beneficiaries), if there is no empathy it can offer to the staff. I wish she will fight back, and with support of others, I hope this time she will win and teach them a lesson so that they will be less arrogant, at least to the less powerful people within the organization, as they always preach about.