Who Can Answer the Hunger Question in Warrap State?
5 min readBy Ariik Atekdit, South Sudan
May 1, 2015 (SSB) — Whenever one talk with people who come from villages in Warrap State, the first complaint they raise is lack of food commodities in the local markets. Majority of that population are cattle owners and have since last year been selling their cows to face hunger with their properties.
In Akop district of Warrap State, a bag of 100 kg of sorghum is being directly exchanged with an heifer (cow). That is too much; when at times that cow could be sold at 2000 SSP in Wau. So our people are being cheated because if they don’t pay then the rainy season would arrive and all roads will be blocked and there will be no food even available in the market.
The innocent population has from time to time contacted their relatives in towns: Juba or Wau at least to supply their families because at time they fear that their cattle would even finish. Prices in the local markets are high and almost majority of poor villagers cannot afford the hiking prices of commodities. In reality things are tough and life is on test and the future is dark. Can you imagine!!
If no food is availed for this population it is more likely that the shortage of food will repeat itself next year because no one expects the population of empty stomachs to till a large land this year to produce enough food. How would they make when they are starving now and very weak work?
I thought something would be done because at least this population can’t be watched at without giving a hand of help. For all these years many thought road connecting Greater Bahr el Ghazal with the rest of South Sudan was vital. The government has promised every now and then to construct a permanent highway to help that population and to ease transport of people and commodities to those ends.
This is a government obligation and it is the only organization to handle that because the community cannot manage with their resources. The Highway all along from Juba up to areas like Aweil and Abyei area is a big project and demand government to sacrifice and build it.
If any person tries to imagine with me that if a 50-Kg bag of sorghum is sold @ 400 SSP in Wau at this time. How much would it be in July, August and September when the seasonal roads are totally blocked?
People can easily die, right? They can die easily because even the internal roads of those areas won’t be functional again. There is a need to supply their markets so that the people can fill their stocks as earlier as now.
Malaria had been another threat to that population for the previous years, the disease has been killing innocent population and the said members of parliament (MP) in the national government kept silent to provide drugs that would rescue the life of innocent people. Today the MPs are tying the lips not even to a word about hunger in greater Bahr el Ghazal region because they are celebrating extension of their terms. We shall ask the President to send them home because they are not any longer our representatives. They are representatives of their own wives and children they are now keeping in Uganda, Kenya and beyond. The local population cannot be made victims of the ongoing crisis while MPs and other government officials celebrate extension tenure in foreign lands.
So what happen is that the citizens help the government and the government doesn’t help its people. For your information, some families have their sons fighting in the frontlines, in Unity State, Jonglei, or Upper Nile. They are there to protect the government from collapse. Some of them might be in Juba. And at times their vulnerable parents are just left to die because of hunger. Is that fair for the government?
Of recent, I have heard that there is the so-called Letter of Credits (LCs) that gives loans to state governments to provide commodities that would drop prices in villages to make our people afford. But are the commodities going?
Some states have already reported that LCs has been diverted to personal accounts by some individuals. Warrap State government last week has reported that about 15, 000 bags is on the way to the state but until today it has not been verified whether it will reach or disappears somewhere. But even that food will not be enough my dear people.
By simple arithmetic if you divide 15, 000 bags to 6 counties in Warrap State plus Abyei area then roughly we will have 2000 bags going to one county. And for instance, for a county that has 10 Payams like Tonj North, you will end up giving 200 bags to one Payams.
And if for example the Payam has about six bomas it means about 30 bags will be entitle for a boma’s population. In most cases the population of each boma is estimated to be more than 5000 people, thirty bags is not enough for them point blank.
Frankly speaking, that food is not enough. We want to encourage our business community to send more food commodities to Warrap State to rescue life from perishing. It will be shameful to report that people from the President’s home state are dying of hunger.
To what I can see, this issue wants people from the national government or the trusted individuals to handle it. Our people need to be taken care of. Most of the villagers don’t want free distributed food, but they want to sell their cows and buy the food with their money. They want the market to be brought nearer to them with affordable prices.
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