FEATURE: challenges and achievements In Jonglei
Photos:PLEASE USE ANY PHOTO THAT WILL BE GOOD UNDER EACH SUB-SECTION
OF THIS STORY.
1. Hussein maar Nyuot, in his office in Bor, ST file,
2. Bor hospital,with patients in the ward, ST file
3.Students sitting for Secondary school exams in Malek Academy in
April this year in Bor ST file
4. students also, choose one,
5.Armed collected during disarmament in Bor town, ST file
September 28, 2013 (BOR) – Jonglei is known for tribal violence including abduction of young women and children, possibly for economical purposes and retaliatory actions. The state has been in turmoil for long not only from zonal conflicts between Nuer, Dinka and Murle but also from the rebels led by Murle ethnic tribeman, David Yauyau.
Despites challenges, the state government claimed to have some few things in the state for the last two years of South Sudan independent.
Speaking to the state acting governor, on Wednesday in Bor, who is also the minister of information and communication, Hussein Maar Nyuot, said the his state had achieved a lot in health care, agriculture among other sectors.
Health care
“In our main hospital in the state, we built a big maternity ward”, said Maar. “This maternity ward is helping our women, our new born babies”
The state maternity ward built with the support from the World Health Organization [WHO] and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), has a considerable carrying capacity needed by the state health sector to monitor and facilitate natal and postnatal cases.
The government has installed the modern laboratory in the hospital for all kinds of tests to be conducted there, said Maar.
“It helps now when there are referral cases from the counties. We do all kind of tests in the hospital”, he said.
The ministry of health also trained a good number of health workers with the help of development agencies and nurses and was deployed in the counties.
In 2013, the government claimed a number of qualified doctors to help in health issues.
“Those days, you could see one or two doctors, but now a good number of them. Even some of the counties are lucky now that there are doctors sent to the counties, that is a big achievement.” Maar added.
The state government is now working on health insurance policy. The bill was passed by the executive and is now waiting to be tabled in the assembly.
“We are going to have health insurance policy. Our people will contribute to their heath insurance and the government will contribute some money and we are starting very soon”, said the Maar.
Without healthy people, Maar went ahead, you cannot achieve any sound development.
Still more needs to be done in the counties and payams, where majority of people live. Only few qualified doctors work in some counties, medicines don’t reach in time.
“The biggest challenge is that we don’t have qualified staff in the number of payams and Bomas. We lack medicines in the counties; the medicines that come from Juba don’t reach the counties on time. The medicines remained in the headquarters for the whole year due to lack of roads. In the counties, laboratories and other facilities are not there”, he explained.
Education
Education is the largest ministry, whose employees are half of the total force in the state [over 6,000 people employees in the state].
The achievement, according to Maar, the number of students who set for Primary school certificate has increased in counties in academic of 2012/2013, this, he said, “tells that most of the counties have primary eight, it was not there before in some counties”.
“The counties that never set for primary school certificates have set this time. Also a big number of students set for Secondary schools certificates this year”, he continued.
The number of secondary schools has increased in the state. The state has introduced two new secondary schools to be added to the existing number of secondary schools in the state. The two schools are Pochalla and Uror secondary schools chartered by the government, this would increase the number government secondary schools to seven.
He said “this would give a chance to a big number of pupils who set for primary certificate and had no way to go to secondary school”.
The minister of education had received and distributed a good number of primary textbooks to the counties.
“Now, our children are using them”, said Maar.
The challenges in education are very immense, he said, we have problems of lack of teachers.
He admitted that some teachers in the field are not qualified to teach.
“Yes we have a big number of teachers, we need to do screening, some are not qualified and some have a challenge because they were trained in Arabic schools and now the medium of instruction is English, so its very difficult for these teachers to teach in English”, said Maar.
“The ministry is working to take these teachers for English Language training so that they are able to teach in English”.
School equipment, desks, chairs, tables and others reached the counties very late. Some schools have not yet received up to now, according to Maar. No food in schools, some children walk from very far places and go back home without eating anything, abig challenge although World Food Program (WFP) is addressing it, he explained.
“Education is the heart for development, if we need to develop, then definitely our government from Juba and the state need to focus on education”, he lamented.
Agriculture
This year, agricultural produce from local farmers will fall below what was previously expected. The yields, in most of the counties were affected by flood and late onset of rains.
Among the flood affected counties are Twic East and Bor counties. Uror and Nyirol counties were affected by late onset of rains and drought in between June and August. Most farmers in Pibor County did try to farm since they were either on run in July during communal violence when Lou Nuer youth attacked eastern payams of Pibor county or due to fear of attack by rebels by Yauyau.
However, the state managed to advance agricultural mechanization in the state through provision of tractors.
In the last two years, according to Maar, “we were able to get 48 tractors with all their implements. The state government bought 18 tractors on loan and 30 tractors were provided by UNDP”.
“These tractors are distributed to the counties, this is a big thing”, he said.
The state, according to Maar, had a plan to the changed the attitude of youth in the state, “in the sense that they are engaged in farming to keep them busy, not to go for raiding and other crimes”.
“In most of the counties, the youth have grouped themselves into agricultural societies and cooperatives and now they are farming. This will empower and engaged the youth so that they don’t go for cattle raiding”, he explained.
The ministry of agriculture has planned to get more tractors very soon, he added.
“We want to expand agriculture”, said Maar.
Jonglei appeared a winner for the second time in South Sudan Agriculture show last year in Juba.
The state ministry of agriculture and other partners presented local produce with what they called “value added chain” in the show, a presentation that earned a pride after winning the show.
There are also challenges in agriculture.
“We need more trained agriculturalists and we need more tractors but we don’t have funds”, he said.
Infrastructure
The state is among the South Sudan states with poor infrastructures.
The government headquarters is in British-built house before Sudan independent in 1956. Since 2005, after the signing of comprehensive Peace Agreement [CPA], the state government was built ministry of health, a shared building for ministries of agriculture & forestry and Liverstock & fisheries. The state is still struggling to get more funds to more.
Most roads connecting the state capital to Juba or counties are impassible during the rainy seasons. The state lacks road machineries to clear and make roads internally.
A unit of road machineries donated United Nations Development Programme [UNDP] is able to work within Bor town upto Twic East, Ayod but due to lack of funds, “getting enough fuel, enough engineers to work on the roads and spare parts of this equipment is also a problem”, said Maar.
“We happy that we have acquired this unit, we are using them to open up drainage in Bor town, we are able to level the roads within the town. We need more equipment and more support so that we can open up our feeder roads”, maar inserted.
But the recent flood went beyond state government control, and UNMISS intervention to control the flood only protected the roads from being taken up by flood.
About 5,000 families as reported by the state government, were displaced and most of them were accommodated in government schools.
About 600 families were given food, temporary shelters on Friday for before they were relocated out of schools and roadsides to other open places in Bor town.
He said with austerity measures, their budget lacked column for development, hence the state government was not able to build new structures in the state, forcing them to renovate old government houses as offices.
The government has managed, according to Maar, to build water factory for clean water in the state. He said the factory produces very clean and tasty water, which they sell across the region of Upper Nile.
He said the factory generated some money for the state, and has created employment opportunities to some people in the state.
The government has passed Poll tax law, for all the adults in the state to contribute annually to the development of their counties. He said it would be implemented soon this year.
Maar claimed his state emerged the first in financial management in South Sudan due to the electronic software installed in the government institutions in the state for accountability.
In the field of communication we have achieved two things. In Jonglei now, most of the counties are connected with Phone network. The only county, which is not yet connected, is Pochalla, but we have send the towers and the engineers will soon move in to up them up. MTN and Zain will operate there.
“Our people are able to communicate now using telephones”, he said.
The lamented the second achievement in his ministry.
“We have Jonglei radio 98.8, this radio was funded by UNDP and was opened on 9 July”, he narrated.
Our people will now be able to pass their messages to us and we can communicate back to them, he said.
In the Ministry of livestock, they managed to build clean slaughtering houses in Bor, whereby you can have clean meat. And the doctors checked the animals be they are slaughtered, not like those days, where got every person slaughtering a bull or a goat and them sell the meat, which was not healthy. They have appoint of collecting all the milk and they sell it to the people, it is also hygienic.
Insecurity
Security remained challenges throughout the state. Eight counties in Jonglei experienced series of attacks either rebel fighters or tribal men raiding motives or for revenge. Among the counties affected are Pibor, Pochalla, Akobo, Uror, Nyirol, Twic East, Ayod and Bor counties. Maar stressed the center of problems is Pibor county were rebels are hiding.
“We have problems of insecurity, particularly in Pibor County; it is also sometimes extended to other counties”, he said.
Lack of roads had made it difficult for effective deployment for SPLA and other security forces to rescue situations in the counties, he said.
Close to 318 people, from Lou Nuer were injured in July attacks this year in Pibor villages. Death tolls on Lou Nuer side was not properly counted, but Sudan Tribune was able to get 82 people killed on Lou Nuer side, including those who died of snake bits.
Pibor authorities on the other side claimed over 300 peopl killed most of them being children and women, and about 26 women and children abducted, 32 other people unaccounted for.
South Sudan government ordered for disarmament in Jonglei in March 2012 to remove illegal arms in the hands of civilians but more arms were acquired by youth either from Yauyau rebels or from different sources not known to the state government.
A group of young men were caught last year with a number of new AK47 in boxes while in Bor by Criminal Investigation Department in Bor, but the results of investigation about the source of their rifles was not made known to the media.