Renk pledges support to SPLM Aram urges focus on rural development

By Ngor Arol Garang

February 26, 2010 (KHARTOUM) –Local authorities from Renk county, upper Nile State have pledged support to SPLM national presidential candidate, Yasir Saeed Arman asking him to consider their county as one of his support base.

“Comrade Yasir Saeed Arman should not campaign with fear that he will not get more votes from Renk and greater upper Nile as whole; let him take his electoral campaign to northern states where little is known about SPLM than southern states and counties,” said Renk county commissioner Deng Akueny.

He further said people in greater Upper Nile State, particularly in Renk and the whole south Sudan as well, will have no problems in voting for him as party’s flag bearer for national presidential seat, because its objectives are known as party that has struggled to bring the desperately needed changes country wide,

The SPLM official said need Arman become the national president so that he pays more attention to rural areas as strategy of the SPLM vision of New Sudan.

“With the advent of economic liberation, successive Khartoum based governments have increasingly and ignorantly shown no interest to extend it to remote and rural areas since independence” Deng said.

“Arman must take is campaign to rural villages where talks about development are needed,” he adds.

He further stated that creation of the market economy, which seeks to provide conducive environment for free enterprise by individuals and private institutions, needs to be one of the priorities Arman should be talking about it in his rallies.

Rural areas are faced with many challenges including having no institutions, poor investment climate and dilapidated or nonexistent physical and soft infrastructure. These bottlenecks have prevented private and government sectors from thriving to products and services to all sections of the society as expected.

Therefore, as part of the country that has been largely left out of the fledging market economy is rural area, despite mushrooming commercial banks and other financial institution in the urban towns, rural populations still hardly access these services.

The official who voiced his rural concerns, also said, Although local authorities put more efforts to come to the towns and encourage more financial institutions come to rural villages, many of them still shun the rural areas due to the difficulties in operating in those places.

They prefer to deal with clients in the urban areas. As long as infrastructure remains poor in rural areas, the government must step in to help in the provision of microfinance services. The private sector cannot everything, especially when the environment is not conducive for them to operate optimally, he said.

“I need Arman to focus more pay attention to rural area,” he stressed.

(ST)