Puntland State finance minister directs funds to roads over salaries, sparking protests

Analysis: In Puntland State, a Clash Over Asphalt and Paychecks Reveals a Deeper Crisis

In the semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland State, a single sentence has cracked open a wider argument about what progress looks like—and what keeps a state together. “Roads are more important to us than their salaries,” Finance Minister Mohamed Farah Mahmoud said recently, defending public works spending as government employees report going months without pay. The backlash was swift and raw: civil servants, police, and ordinary citizens heard a hierarchy of priorities that seemed to place concrete over people.

The remark, which the minister has not publicly walked back, has ricocheted across social media and tea houses in Garowe. It also lands at a moment of real strain. Civil servants say they have not been paid for six months this year; allowances have evaporated. Members of Puntland State’s security forces have mounted repeated protests over the arrears, arguing that the government has ignored their grievances. Pressed on the wage dispute, the finance minister denied his ministry had “withheld” salaries, but gave no clear timeline for when overdue pay might arrive. The result is both fiscal and political: a cash crunch that is fast becoming a legitimacy test.

When a Budget Becomes a Mirror

Budgets are moral documents. They reveal a government’s diagnosis of what matters most and the trade-offs it is willing to make to get there. In Puntland State, roads are not merely roads; they are a promise—of market access, of security mobility, of visible delivery in a country where state institutions are still stitching themselves together. Across East Africa, leaders have long built careers on “tarmac politics,” showcasing fresh asphalt as proof of competence.

But roads do not police themselves, teach classes, or staff clinics. At some point, unpaid workers vote with their feet: soldiers drift from posts, nurses skip shifts, teachers take second jobs, administrators quietly look for the exit. Across fragile states, salary arrears often cascade into security incidents and service collapse. The angry reaction to Mahmoud’s comment reflects that lived reality. The message many heard was not about development; it was about dignity.

Unpaid Wages and the Security Equation

There is a practical reason why most treasuries treat payroll as sacrosanct. Regular pay is one of the few levers governments have to keep discipline within the security sector. In Puntland State, where the security forces have protested repeatedly, salary delays risk eroding cohesion in units that are central to the region’s stability and its fight against militant groups and criminal networks. In the broader Somali context, unpaid armed men are a combustible variable.

Civilian services bear the cost too. Losing allowances can mean missing the city bus or skipping meals. In a place where household budgets are wafer-thin, six months without pay is not an accounting wrinkle; it is the difference between staying afloat and sliding into debt. It is notable that public anger today extends beyond government employees to the wider community, which reads unpaid workers as an early warning sign. People know the price of brittle institutions.

What Explains the Cash Crunch?

Puntland State’s finances are shaped by familiar pressures. The region relies heavily on customs revenue, particularly from Bosaso port and border points, which wax and wane with trade flows and security conditions. Inflation squeezes purchasing power and complicates revenue targets. Drought and global commodity volatility hit a pastoralist economy hard. Though Somalia has made strides toward debt relief and debt sustainability at the federal level, member states still face cash management challenges and limited borrowing options. In such an environment, delays can metastasize quickly if treasuries lack buffers.

Infrastructure adds another layer of complexity. Road projects are often financed through a mix of domestic revenue, contractors’ credit, and donor-backed programs. If the road money is ring-fenced by external lenders or tied to specific disbursement conditions, a ministry may indeed be unable to divert it to salaries—even in a crisis. That is not a defense of tone-deaf messaging; it is a reminder that transparency matters. The public can accept trade-offs, but only if they see the books and trust the arbiter.

Trust, Transparency, and the Power of Plain Facts

For now, the Puntland State government faces a dual communication and credibility problem. It has not convincingly explained why salaries are late, when arrears will be cleared, and how choices were made. Mahmoud’s assertion that his ministry did not “withhold” pay may be technically true and politically hollow. Without a timeline and a cash plan, it reads as avoidance.

Trust can be rebuilt—but not with slogans. Officials could publish an arrears ledger, line by line. They could break down the funding architecture of the road projects at issue, clarifying what can and cannot be repurposed. They could agree to ring-fence a portion of monthly collections for payroll until the backlog is cleared. They could invite an independent auditor, even a respected civil society consortium, to monitor payments. In other words: share the constraints and then share the plan.

Lessons from Elsewhere

Puntland State is hardly alone in navigating the politics of asphalt and paychecks. In Nigeria, states have periodically fallen behind on salaries while pushing forward on high-visibility projects, sparking similar outrage. In Kenya and Ghana, debt-servicing obligations have crowded out social spending, turning capital projects into flashpoints. In Lebanon, the collapse of the currency all but erased public worker incomes, with devastating consequences for public order and services. Across cases, one lesson stands out: the quickest way to lose the public is to pay for concrete and leave people waiting at payday.

What Comes Next?

Set aside the heated rhetoric and one core question remains: what do Puntlanders consider progress? Is it the road that cuts a day off a trader’s journey, or the teacher who shows up every morning because she is paid on time? The honest answer is both, and the hard work is sequencing—what gets paid first, and why.

• Publish a clear payroll timeline and clear the oldest arrears first.
• Ring-fence a percentage of monthly revenue for salaries until the backlog is gone.
• Disclose the financing terms of current road projects and any legal limits on reallocation.
• Prioritize pay for security forces and frontline services to protect stability.
• Invite external oversight to rebuild credibility and reduce rumors.

As Puntland State debates the minister’s remark, it also has a chance to reset the narrative. Roads can symbolize ambition. Paid workers signal reliability. Put together, they tell a story of a state not only constructing the physical arteries of commerce but also tending to the human heart that keeps it beating.

What will Puntland State choose to be known for in this moment—the shine of new asphalt or the quiet confidence of people who trust payday will come? The answer matters far beyond Garowe’s traffic circles. In the Horn of Africa, where governance is often judged by the gap between promise and delivery, the government that pays on time earns more than goodwill. It buys the stability that development needs to last.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.