Upper Nile Melut’s urges oil companies to sponsor developmental projects

By Ngor Arol Garang

November 16, 2009 (MELUT) — Commissioner of the oil producing county in greater Upper Nile region, Thon Juac, today at his residence in Melut, called on oil companies to sponsor developmental projects in the area.

“We have a lot of developmental projects needing financial supports from countries involved in extraction of oil across South Sudan not only Melut, he said.

Asked what projects that need financial supports, he said, our communities particularly those being displaced from oil producing areas needs schools, roads, health centers and more importantly resettlement assistances.

“Some of these people who have been displaced from their original homes after the discovery of oil need to be compensated too,” he said.

Juac also called for strong security to oil companies saying most of their workers are often snatched by irresponsible armed groups whose intentions, according to him, are to get money from them.

“I have in number of times come across such life threatening incidents,” he said adding forces guarding oil fields cooperate with of the armed criminals.

Recently “I have seen individuals snatched by armed criminal released after intervention by forces guarding oil fields,” he stressed.

He went further to complain that his orders are never adhered to by the forces guarding oil fields.

“Soldiers are too defiance and aggressive to our instructions demanding them to refrain from acts of violence, especially of a political nature,” he stressed.

(ST)