Conspiracy or Malpractice: Why is Fire Consuming Government Offices in Juba, South Sudan?
By PaanLuel Wël
Dear Esteemed Readers,
Besides the well-known problems felling the newly independent nation of South Sudan–inter-ethnic strifes, mega-corruption, mismanagement etc. and the never-ending precarious military and economic stand-0ff with the north–fire has just surfaced to rival them all.
The beautiful presidential office constructed and inaugurated just last year was smoldered by fire on February 09, 2012. That embarrassing incident was blamed squarely on “an electrical fault.”
A fire broke out at the official residence of South Sudanese president, Salva Kiir on Thursday and burnt down a building he uses as an office. The incident, which started at about 7:00pm local time was reportedly attributed to an electrical fault said to have emanated from an electrical pole next to the house. No casualties were involved [Sudan Tribune].
The new Office of the President of @RepSouthSudan in Juba
Then on February 17, 2012, merely eight days after the presidential office went up in flame, the SPLM General Headquarters that house SG Pagan Amum’s office was consumed in a similar inferno. Fortunately no one was hurt, but faulty electrical wiring was blame for the fire.
A devastating fire broke out on Friday at the headquarters of South Sudan’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in Juba, a week after a similar incident at the official residence of the country’s president Salva Kiir Mayardit. No one was hurt in the blaze although SPLM officials say many files and documents were lost in the fire that erupted at the premises of the national secretariat at around 1pm. The party’s northern secretariat, located in Thongpiny area, Munuki payam (district) is the official workplace of Pagan Amum, the SPLM secretary general and other senior party officials. The cause of fire remains unknown although senior officials have speculated that it was down to an electric fault [Sudan Tribune].
What remained of South Sudan ruling party head offices after a fire Friday afternoon.
Such incidences of fire outbreaks are not uncommon in Juba. The Chinese-owned Beijing Hotel in Juba, for example, has been repeatedly gutted down by fire, one in 2009 in which about 60 rooms were blazed down and again last year in December.
The Beijing hotel in Juba on fire in 2009 (ST file photo)
Common and well-documented as accidental fire outbreaks might be, what is puzzling though in this latest cases are the timing and the official buildings affected. The timing is suspicious because these inferno came on the heel of a scathing press release statement from the ex-minister of finance, Mr. Arthur Akuien Chol. In that statement, February 10, 2012, the disgraced former minister not just denied the allegation of corruption against him, he implicated the VP Dr. Machar, SG Pagan Amum and the “Above” (which, undoubtedly, is a coded word for President Kiir) in the corruption dealings that appeared to have cost South Sudan over $60 million between 2005-2007 when Mr. Chol was the finance minister.
That the office of SPLM SG Pagan and the presidential office are being consumed by fire is raising eyebrows in many quarters across South sudan particularly because some “confidential documents are feared to have been lost as a result of the impromptu fire outbreak.” That, to most wary South Sudanese citizens, sounds like a conspiratorial sabotage to destroy files and computers that might contain incriminating information concerning the aforementioned corruption case which is, reportedly, under investigation.
Of course, that could just be a conspiracy talk, with no substantiation to it. What is indisputable, however, is the faultiness of the electrical engineers contracted by the government of South Sudan. Because of corruption–kickbacks accruable from such contracts, greedy government officials prefer to deal with “fake” supposedly foreigner engineers from neighboring countries as they are easy to control and intimidate-able. Therefore, much of the budgeted funds ended up being stolen and the amateur engineers would wire up faulty electrical wires on jut third of the allocated funds, fully aware that he would never be held accountable by anyone for fear of exposure.
As these three concerned South Sudanese citizens explain below, the danger pose to South Sudan by corruption in government contracts outweigh even the one mega-corruption case involving ex-minister Mr. Chol:
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Dear all,
Last year I was in the same SPLM offices in the hall when the air-condition almost started a fire. There was an electrical spark and the wires connecting to the air-condition started to burn. Everybody panicked and fled the hall except me because I saw it necessary to turn off the switch and the thing died down. Another time the air-condition in the hall of the offices of the Economic affairs secretary was always sparking and there were naked wires you could see. It is only God who saves us in the South Sudan sometimes. So to me it is not a surprise when fires from electrical faults combined with heat can turn deadly. There were many people who witnessed the sparks in the SPLM offices and they can tell their sides also even though they may not know why and how it happens.
The workmanship of electrical connections in Juba is appalling. The Ugandan amateurs do the worse work and the things can burn any time. When I moved into a house in Juba I had to redo all the wiring in the roof. As soon as I turned a switch the thin wires went into smoke but likely the house was mostly concrete and it did not burn. I brought in a South Sudanese electrical technician (John Deng) and together we changed the wiring which was badly made by these Ugandan contractors. The wiring must have a rating -which means how much current it can stand. Connecting thin poor wire to an air-condition consuming 3 or 4 KWs of Electricity can be deadly as it will overheat and melt the wires insulators and connecting the two materials together so that short circuit can start to burn things.But it is the norm in Juba where those of us South Sudanese who have the technical knowledge are ignored and not being empowered to work for the government of south Sudan and people prefer Ugandan thieves to do the jobs and without regard to standards and safety.
Well what surprise me is that an investigation committee is formed all the time to come up with reason of the fires. The reasons are well known as I stated here and these committees are e just a waste of resources since the root cause of wrong contractors and poor installations are not being considered at all. Also the committee are made of the same biased people who cannot put an independent view like I say here because they are the very people responsible for bringing the wrong people to do the work in the first place.The government should come up with a Standards organisations with ability to persecute and fine. Many commissions from the technical side of things have been missing from the list of commissions in Juba as the Government tends to shy away from technology things.
Eng Charles B. Kisanga
Juba/South Sudan
M. Sc in Communications Systems and B. Eng Hons in Electrical and Electronics Engineering-Herriot Watt University.———————————————————————————————————————————————————————–
Dear all
They say, it takes two to tango. While we may blame the Ugandans and Kenyans for providing substatndard services, we must also be ready to blame ourselves to a certain extend for letting us be taken for a ride by these people. First, our education system has neglected vocational training and the establishment of technical colleges that would have provided us with middle level cadres to do what the Ugandans are doing.
We have decided to open up ten universities in the ten states, and not considered opening a single politechnic. The private sector too inherited the madness and have been calling every tukul a private university, and we are happy to go along with that. The few who raise a voice of reason are dubbed as elitists. You do not need a degree to make electrical installations or do plumbing. This sorry attitude has created a vacuum for the Ugandans and others to fill.
Secondly, as someone has already mentoned elsewhere, we prefer to be politicians whatever our profession. And with politicians required at the payam, county, state and national levels, politics has now become a booming business in South Sudan, for it does not need much effort to be one. Hence, even the few artisans we have, do not have the time to dirty their hands and sweat for a living. Third, some of those who decide to compete with the Ugandans sometime price themselves out of the market, for they want to get rich very quickly.
Now when you want to build a budget house, you have no alternative but to turn to the Ugandans who are ready to work flat out and get the job done, even if in a shoddy fashion. But, when it is government contract, there is no excuse but to go for the best. Howver, due to lack of transparency and the fact that whoever is giving out the tender also wants a cut, it usually goes to some untested contractor. It is so easy to make a background check of any would-be Ugandan or Kenyan contracting firm since we do have offices in these countries.
But do we ever do that? I doubt it. Hence, let us not malign Ugandan contractors. The fault is entirely ours, and, as smart business people, they are only cashing on our naivity and greed.
Charles Bakheit
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Cde. Kisanga,
I agree with your analysis 100%. The concept in RSS is to go for the quickest and cheapest product without taking into account any safety precautions or viability/durability of whatever it is. This is one of the reasons that RSS is a big market for the cheapest Chinese third grade products. (Mind you the Chinese do have first and second grade products which are better and safer).
Just to mention one out of the bunch, anyone who knows our East African brothers, will confirm that since 2005 to this day, they consider RSS as their Gold rush destination where even an unqualified construction worker can come and claim he/she is an Engineer and can still make it big because there is no assigned system to check him/her. And guess what; these are the people who are building our nascent RSS using the mentioned third grade products from China! Anyone who want build anywhere today in RSS will tell you he/she will prefer the Wee-wees (East Africans) than the South Sudanese workers because they are easy to deal with and much cheaper. But nobody is taking the time to check the quality/safety of their work as compared to their South Sudanese counterparts.I am not sure if the idea of outsourcing every single project to contractors is doing RSS any good because that is where the issue of kick-backs, cuts and percent of shares etc comes in. Hence it observed that the chunk of funds allocated for a specific project always disappear in the process rendering the intended project to operate on minimal funds.
I think in this regard our Ministries of Housing, Construction and Roads need to quickly come up with standard safety rules and regulations to govern how contractors operate and hold them to task in the courts if they recklessly screw-up else we will never have long lasting and stable constructions in RSS.Cde. Mazinda
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