Components of Sudan’s Gezira Scheme said to trade hands in closed tender
June 7, 2009 (CAIRO) – The massive agriculture scheme in Gezira state of Sudan has attracted investors affiliated with the ruling National Congress Party, leading to privatization of engineering establishments and the railways department, according to the Sudan Human Rights Organization – Cairo (SHROC).
The Gezira Scheme, considered the largest irrigation agriculture project in Africa, has long been centrally managed in large part by the Sudanese State. Located between the Blue Nile and White Nile, it was established to produce cotton.
SHROC reported on Sunday that Minister of Agriculture Abdel-Haleem Al-Muta’fi and the new Governor of Gezira Alzubair Bashir Taha took measures to purge hundreds of the Gezira specialized engineers and other key professionals from the cotton gins and the railway department, in addition to planned displacement of hundreds of thousands of the farmers’ families that have lived in and served for almost a century the Gezira Scheme.
“The new Governor, formerly a minister of interior with a violent record against unarmed civilians protesting government policies, launched a massive assault by armed regiments of the police force, the armed forces, and militias of the NCP ruling party, on the markets of Medani, the capital city of Gezira, that terrorized the population, especially the low-income farmers’ families selling tea or other local products. Hundreds of the terrorized citizens were then put on custody in appalling conditions,” stated SHROC.
The next day, the Minister of Agriculture promptly acted to sell cheaply the Scheme’s agricultural engineering establishments and machineries to members of the NCP ruling party in a closed private tender.
Another sale was made of the Gezira Railways Department, which serves to ship raw cotton bales to the Maringan Ginning Mills. According to the Cairo-based rights watchdog, the railways department was cheaply sold to GIAD, a company of the international Muslim Brotherhood. NCP party members also allegedly bought the major spare-parts workshop of Maringan, which for decades had ensured high productivity of the gins.
In response to the development, SHROC denounced the act as “cheap partisan privatization at the expense of the working forces of the Scheme.”
The group further called on both the governor of Gezira state and the minister of agriculture to resign, saying it “condemns in the strongest terms possible this violent destruction of the Gezira State Scheme by top officials of the NCP.”
SHROC suggested that the move by the governor and minister undermined the rights of the people and the interests of the State.
(ST)