VIENTIANE – Documents provided to NotTheNation.com reveal that the United Nation’s Laos office has asked UN headquarters in New York to sign off on a budget of 224 million US dollars for the year 2009-2010. The entire gross domestic product of the small, land-locked country last year was 194 million US dollars.
The office’s proposed expenditures for next year include the purchase of 25 hummers, the construction of a new housing condo for UN employees, which features a modern fitness center, lap pool and smoothie bar, and a packet of pencils for every child in Laos.
Asked for comment, senior communications officer Gabriel Garcias from the Vientiane headquarters explained, “The pencils alone will cost us millions.”
“We have just completed a ten-year survey throughout every part of the country at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars that determined that in 1998 there were 6 million children under the age of 10 in Laos. Now, ten years later, these children are all between the ages of 10 and 20 and we are ready to revisit them as considerable time and expense to provide them with number 2 pencils. Some of them will be very hard to locate and for that we need the new hummers.”
Garcias added that the budget would also cover on-going projects, such as the daily import of fresh ingredients for his new tapas restaurant and bar in downtown Vientiane. “After all, it is not civilization without sangria,” said Garcias.
