Usually when I’m walking around Dili people come and talk to me. Most of the time it’s just banter about where I’m from and what I’m doing. On a few occasions, people have asked for my phone number and I’ve given it out. I now have a steady stream of people who call me asking for work, money, phone credit and so on.

It is, perhaps, an indicator of how desperate many people in Dili are. I just had a young chap call me and tell me he has no money to support his wife and his baby. “Please help me find a job,” he said.

Last week, an excited man with wonky teeth gave me a call to ask for money so he can buy food. You see this a lot in Dili. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been sat in a restaurant by myself only for someone to come in off the street, sit down and ask for food, money or both.

People always ask me for jobs. They’re not even after anything in particular – they just need money.

Two stories, one in the local and one in international press, have been published about the salaries foreign advisers in Timor-Leste’s Ministry of Finance are paid. If you were on Twitter yesterday then you may have seen me babbling about something big about to come out. Well, this is it. Perhaps I’m overstating the significance of these stories, but when you see how huge the salaries are, you may change your mind.

The first story that came out is by Tempo Semanal, a local newspaper run by Jose Belo, who you may have read about for his disagreements with Justice Mininster Lucia Lobato. Tempo Semanal has published copies of the contracts of a number of foreign advisers.

Although the Tempo Semanal story makes some reference to nepotism, the report itself doesn’t offer any proof of this. However, what you do have are the salaries of people such as Canadian Michael Francino, planning and financial adviser to the Ministry of Finance. He earns a base rate of US$1,670 a day.

His total package, as far as I can tell, is for 10 months and it comes to US$589,449. Paul Toohey’s report in The Australian today highlights that Kevin Rudd earns AUS$330,000, or US238,000.

From Toohey’s story:

Former foreign minister Alexander Downer says the consultancy fees are "obscene", given that East Timor is the poorest country in Asia, where more than 50 per cent of the people earn about $US1 a day.

…It is the World Bank, in conjunction with East Timor's Finance Minister, Emilia Pires, which has approved the extraordinary consultancies. Ms Pires signs off on the contracts, which then go to the World Bank for final approval.

The World Bank's stated aim is to provide "financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world".

Mr Downer says the UN never paid this sort of money when it was in East Timor, and still doesn't.

It’s being called a scandal and it raises a lot of issues. As you’d expect, the opposition FRETILIN party is all over this.

There are, of course, two sides to this story. Also from Toohey’s article:

Nigel Roberts, the World Bank's country director for East Timor, New Guinea and the Pacific Islands, says he accepts that the issue is important.

"I agree the optics here may look incongruous but addressing the pressing needs of the country at this stage in its development requires help from outside, given the very small number of experienced and qualified Timorese staff available.

"Using cheaper expertise isn't going to help develop the country. In an ideal world, this type of expertise would be provided on a voluntary basis, but unfortunately no employment market anywhere in the world works on this principle, and people don't discount their services when they work in places like Dili or Moresby or Honiara."

Perhaps the real question is whether these huge salaries are donor money well spent. Timor-Leste is a very poor country. Half of the population is below the poverty line. About 70% live in rural areas and this 70% accounts for the majority of the country’s poor. People live on less than a dollar a day.

This is a tricky one to call. Development takes time and it requires outside support. The money to pay these foreign advisers isn’t coming from the government, but from the World Bank, so this isn’t a question of government spending.

People are throwing around words such as “nepotism” and “corruption”, but I haven’t seen any solid evidence of either. All I have seen is that there are a lot of advisers earning a lot of money in one of poorest country’s in the world.

This is a big issue and there could be a significant fallout from it. Minister of Finance Emilia Pires recently released a statement:

You may also like to know that all the Foreign advisors plus some National (Timorese) local advisors within my Ministry are actually funded by the Foreigners' money. Make no mistake, this Government is aware that sometimes it is necessary to spend more in order to get results quickly. Sometimes we do not explain enough about what we are doing but that is because we are just too busy trying to get the results and improve the lives of our People.

Edit: I had pasted the wrong quote in above. Fixed now.

I think there will be more about this coming out over the course of the next few days and weeks. One thing to note is that the opposition recently announced that it will hold a "long march" some time in May or June. The long-awaited peace march of last year never happened, but with fodder like this that can be spun in so many ways, perhaps FRETILIN will be able to rally the masses from the districts.

I'm interested to hear people's thoughts on this matter.

The list of the top 100 Thailand blogs that I set up a year ago continues to grow. On the list at the moment are 180 blogs about Thailand. I update the rankings as and when I remember and add new blogs if they are suitable (i.e. if they are actually blogs).

At the moment, the header isn't showing up for some reason. I may have made some changes and then messed up the code a little. I've tried to fix it but have failed. It shouldn't affect the page — everything still works — but there's no header image as there was before.

I think it's been like that for a couple of weeks. Suffice to say I will try and sort it out in the coming weeks, which will probably mean paying some chap in India to look at it.

The top 100 is one of the most visited pages of this blog with a steady stream of traffic stopping by from one day to the next. The top Thailand blog, according to my list, is still New Mandala while down at position 180 is Thailand Moment.

Here's a quick personal request. Please bear with me. I need an important document to be picked up from Bali in the next few weeks. As there are a handful of people based in Timor-Leste who read this blog, I'm calling out to you lot to see if any of you are traveling to Bali (and then coming back here) in the near future. If you are, please contact me. You will be repaid with eternal respect and admiration.

I don't know if this is a local problem or it affects the whole city (or country), but nobody I've spoken to can make or receive calls on a cellphone this morning.

Thank you, Timor Telecom.

Addendum: Almost as soon as I'd published this I received a phone call (from a politician), so I guess it's a local thing, although other people around Dili have been reporting the same problem.