South Sudan government lacks equipment, people
Mar 1, 2006 (MALAKAL) — Sitting idle at empty desks in gloomy offices without telephones, faxes or electricity, one wonders how south Sudan’s new government employees can function.
The truth is, observers say, they really don’t.
More than two decades of civil war not only devastated south Sudan’s infrastructure but also wiped out the education of an entire generation and forced more able southerners to flee the destruction.
With a 2005 peace deal to end Africa’s longest civil war, the south formed an autonomous government. But although the new administration now has money at hand, it’s a tough job finding people able to spend it.
“There was one minister who … hadn’t read more than a three-line news bulletin in more than 20 years,” said Jenny Blinkhorn, who is training southern government employees.
“It took 10 minutes for him to read a paragraph out loud,” she said. Blinkhorn is part of a British initiative to teach southern Sudanese basic governmental skills like writing reports and giving presentations.
The bitter north-south civil war claimed more than 2 million lives and forced more than 4 million people to flee their homes.
Donors have promised around $4.5 billion in development aid, but Blinkhorn, who works for the British Council in Sudan, says that money is useless without able people who know what to do with it — a rarity in the south.
OFFICES WITHOUT DESKS
Inside the dilapidated hut which houses the justice ministry in Malakal, a major southern town, Adil Mohamed Musa is a lonely figure surrounded by piles of paper and constantly interrupted by people who walk in to complain about disputes with their neighbors over the laundry.
“We need twice the number of people here to deal with all the work,” he said. “We need southerners who are in the diaspora to come back, but we cannot attract them because there’s no houses, roads or even chairs to sit on for them here,” he said.
“We need people to develop the south but they won’t come back until there is development — it’s a vicious circle,” he added.
Malakal’s new 48-member local parliament has opened but many deputies have never worked in government before and some are illiterate.
“We have offices without desks … we have people who’ve never seen a computer before,” said government official Daniel Gatlouk Lul. “How can we function effectively?”
Blinkhorn’s initiative will give 51 senior government employees basic skills over 300 hours of intensive classes.
“It is essential to have training so that they are not … overridden by the international community and can keep their sovereignty,” said Blinkhorn, adding there was a tendency for internationals to ignore Sudanese who were not able to articulate well in English.
Sudanese know what is best for their country but needed to be given the chance to express those ideas, rather than having donors impose foreign solutions on them, she said.
One teacher found out firsthand about cultural differences. On asking his pupils to line up in order of when their birthdays were, he encountered a row of blank faces.
Most Sudanese don’t know when their birthdays are, so the majority of the population’s date of birth is Jan 1.
(Reuters)