Jonglei: deputy governor says, despite challenges, the state has made some achievements
July 28, 2013 (BOR) – Jonglei government expressed to achieve goals in the areas of development in the state despite the difficulties it was facing, for the last two years.
The state deputy governor, who is also the minister of information and communication, Hussein Maar Nyuot, said his state had achieved a lot in health care, Agriculture among other sectors.
“Health was the priority”
“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”, Maar told Sudan Tribune last Friday in Bor.
The state maternity ward built with the support from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), had boasted the state facility in Bor main hospital according to Maar.
“The government has installed modern laboratory in the hospital for all kinds of tests to be conducted there”. “It helps now when there are referral cases. We do all kind of tests in the hospital”, he said.
According to Maar, the government had trained a good number of health workers with the help of development agencies and nurses and were deployed in the counties.
This year have a number of doctors employed by the state government to help in health issues.
“Those days, you could see one or tow 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”, he recalled.
He said the state government is now working on health insurance policy.
“The bill was passed by the executive and is now awaiting to be tabled in the assembly”.
“We are going to have health insurance policy. Our people will contribute to their heatlh insurance and the government will contribute some money and we are starting it very soon”, said the Maar.
“Without health people, he said, you cannot achieve any sound development”.
However, the state deputy governor also pointed out some challenges the state faced in the areas of health care across the state.
“The biggest challenge is that we don’t have qualified staff in many of payams and Bomas”, he inserted.
“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 went ahead.
Education
Education is the largest ministry, according to the state deputy governor.
He said the achievement was increase in the number of students who set for primary school certificate this in December last year.
“This tells us that most of the counties have primary eight. It was not there before in some counties”.
According to the new report issued by Nyirol County commissioner this year, the primary five was highest level for those children studying in his County and that anybody who completed it was helping as teacher in some schools there.
“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.
Again the number of secondary schools has increased in the state, he said. We have two Secondary schools were would be added to the existing number of secondary schools in the state. The two new schools are Pochalla and Uror secondary schools chartered by the government.
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.
“A good number of students set for primary school certificate there and they need secondary schools to go to”, he said.
This would bring the number of government secondary schools to six in Jonglei according to the minister [Maar].
The minister of education had received and distributed a good number of primary text books to the counties through the United kingdom Aids [UKADS]
“Now, our children are using them”, said Maar.
“The challenges in education are very immense, he said, we have problems of
lack of teachers. “some teachers in the field are not qualified to teach”, He admitted that.
“Yes we have a number of teachers, we need to screening them, and some are not qualified and some have a challenge because they were in Arabic Schools and now the medium of instruction is English, so very difficult for these teachers to teach in English”, said Maar. “The ministry is working to take this 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, it is a big although World Food Program (WFP), added Maar, is addressing it.
“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:
In the last two years, we were able to get 48 tractors with all there 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.
Now it has changed the attitude of youth, 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 you have grouped themselves into agricultural societies and cooperatives and now they are farming. This will engaged the youth so that they don’t go for cattle raiding. This will empower the youth and engage them so that don’t go for cattle raiding and this will as peace building”, he explained.
The minister is working very hard to get more tractors very soon. We want to expand in agriculture.
Jonglei appeared a winner in South Sudan Agriculture show last year, that was another achievement.
He was optimistic that the state will have good harvest this year to seal the hunger gap in the counties.
The challenges in Agriculture are: we need more trained agriculturalists and we need more tractors because we don’t funds.
Infrastructure
With the infrastructure, a unit of machineries that is able to work within Bor town and from here to Twic East, Ayod is being graded by the ministry of Physical Infrastructure.
But due to the problem of austerity, the funding for getting enough fuel, enough engineers to work on the roads and spare parts of this equipment is also a problem.
“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.
He said with austerity measures, ther 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 will be opened on 9 July it will open officially”, 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
We have problems of insecurity, particularly in Pibor County; it is also sometimes extended to other counties. Another issue is the issue of roads in the state.
“These are the two biggest issues in the state”, he said.
Of course people are working around the clock to convince David Yauyau to accept peace, then the issue of security would go away.
He did not give any report about how many people were killed in the recent clashes between Lou Nuer and the Murle youth in Pibor since the war started.
He said the government would find out the number of people killed or injured in both sides via the commissioner who would collaborate with the chiefs and the youth on the ground.
(ST)