Jonglei state governor rejects controversial counties
August 27, 2016(BOR) – The office of governor of South Sudan’s Jonglei state has described an “error” the increases in the number of the state counties from 11 to 14.
The increase in the number of counties from 3 to 11, he said, came as a result of the demand of the people in the state, who wanted more administrative units closer to them.
Among the new counties, Bor county was divided into Bor South county (Kolnyang), Bor East county (Anyidi), Bor Centre county (Makuach), Bor West county (Baidit) and Bor North county (Jalle).
Also, Twic East county was divided into Twic North county (Panyagor), Twic Center county (Wangulei) and Twic South county (Adubaar/Maar). Similarly, former Duk county also have Duk Padiet county (Padiet), Duk Payuel county (Payuel) and Panyang county (Pajut).
Furthermore, the current commissioners of the former counties of Bor,Twic East and Duk counties shall continue to run the 11 new counties until further order is established.
But according order of 17 August 2016, the President of South Sudan has signed a document showing the number and names of the new counties in the 28 states.
In this order, Jonglei state appeared to have 14 counties. Three out of these had been added, namely Athooc county, Anyidi Makuach county and Kolnyang county.
These has therefore brought the number of counties to eight from the former Bor county.
Aguer told Sudan Tribune that this was an error from the office of the president.
“We have 11 new counties in Jonglei state. And there has been a lot of mess up in the names and in the number of the counties. This did not happen only in Jonglei state, but in other states, even in Boma and in other states of Bahre Al Gazal, other states of Equartoria. And the document was presented to the councils of states. And the councils of states presented [it ]to the presidency”, Aguer said Wednesday.
“And recently, we have received a final document, and this final document has indicated the counties that we want”, he added.
He said his office would consider only 11 counties and left out the three “error” counties.
“I think part of it is confusion in the typing in the office of the president. But we will not go by the confusion; we will take the real counties. The number here is even 14 [counties], but we don’t have 14. So that is a printing error,” stressed Aguer.
He also went as far as naming the counties believed to have resulted from the typing error.
“There is Athooc, which is an error, there is Anyidi-Makuach, which is an error, there is Kolnyang which again is an error. So we will have 11 counties out of this document, which is signed by the president of Republic of South Sudan, and that will go into the budgeting planning”, explained the governor.
“By the end of this month, we will embark on the appointment of new commissioners. So we will have new commissioners by the end of August”, he added.
On Saturday, elders, elites and intellectuals of former Bor county, living in Bor town, met in Bor, to find a common ground on the nnumber counties. The people, who got divided into payams, presented their views to the acting chairperson of Bor community and the present Bor county commissioner and the members of parliament.
Their resolution further indicated that former Bor county had accepted the eight new counties instead. Majority of people described it as a genuine number of counties that people of Bor deserved based on the their populations results of 2008 census.
(ST).