Southern Sudanese embrace peace with huge expectations
By Manyang Mayom
April 10, 2006 (RUMBEK) — Since the comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was been signed in Nairobi Kenya on 9 January 2005, Rumbek population expectations reflect what southern Sudanese wait for from the peace.
“Rumbek will be like a America according some youths here in Rumbek comment, a smiling legal officer, told me as he gave me a lift on the back of his motorbike – one of the few in town.”It will be like America even, because America is the top in the world,” he said. But the reality for the town is that although peace has finally come after 21 years of civil war, almost everything will have to be built from scratch. Inter-clan fighting must to be stopped immediate.
New roofs
The airstrip is a dirt track where goats graze alongside the rusting remains of an aircraft which once crash-landed. The brick buildings along the untarred roads are now empty shells – testament to the intense fighting the area saw during the war, which left an estimated 1.5 million dead. Most people in the Rumbek communities always stay at the village at their their traditional building housing (Tukuls). People live in traditional thatched huts and hardly anyone has electricity or running water. It’s only NGO’s and UN agencies where you can use the electricity in Rumbek Town. Mr. Laat Henry Maluac is electricity generator man which almost ran by many government affaires, therefore Laat say that there is luck of money payment within the NGOs Vs Government. Furthermore Mr. Laat Henry is assisted by his brother Makuer Kuet on electric job in the town of Lakes State-Rumbek.
There has been no rebuilding because we only reached a peace settlement the other day,” said Agum Joseph Kuc, an administrator from the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM/A) – the former rebel group. (Money for development and investment finally should come from domestic resources) “We are going to have roads; we are going to have roofs; we are going to have nice buildings – if the implementation is done well by Government of South Sudan (GOSS) and National Congress Party (NCP).
Competing currencies
One of the smarter buildings in Rumbek is the town’s newly opened bank call Nile Commercial Bank (NCB). When the north introduced a new currency – the Sudanese Dinar – in 1999, the south rejected it…SPLA like the old Nimeri currency and sonly the created their own money call New Sudan Pounds signed by their former finance minister Mr. Kuol Manyang Jok. In Rumbek it is possible to spend Kenyan shillings, US dollars, Ugandan shillings and Sudan’s old currency – the pound. There is no confusion at all” we have all the rates fixed. As people get used to the economic environment here they get to know all the different rates.” Say by NCB officers. But in time, people will also have to get used to another new currency – to be introduced throughout Sudan – promised as part of the peace agreement.
Dollars will flow in to South Sudan sooner.
Funds for the reconstruction of towns like Rumbek should arrive soon. Under the terms of the peace deal, the government of southern Sudan will share oil revenue equally with the mainly NCP government in the north. Hundreds of millions and perhaps even billions of dollars will flow to SPLM leadership Lt.General Savla Kiir Mayardit new administration. (Most Rumbek residents have no running water or electricity). Money for development and investment finally should come from domestic resources. While the South finds its feet and tries to cope with the expected return of millions of people displaced by the war, the UN has appealed for over $600m to cover development projects this year according to what I hear from the servable people on the street here in lakes State – Rumbek town.
SPLA soldiers has just received their incentives provisions day back ago, It is a great task SPLA got a little payment thought money where not enough to fulfills their needs. It will be given a solution very sooner said by one SPLA command during their window outlook after money. I have just understood now that SPLA will get back to normally and not much like before. Really money where been release to SPLA fighters with different ranking star according to their senior ranking.
(ST)