Building Road Infrastructures is nothing without Maintenance
By Malith Da Alier
Many a times south Sudanese boast of how blessed their country is, the abundance of vegetation, petroleum in plenty, rich soil suitable for agriculture, variety of wildlife that could nurture tourism and not least the presence of domestic animals and birds for the provision of milk, meat, eggs among others. This is an indisputable proclamation the naked eye can tell with precision.
On the other hand, however, there are those who talk about the enormous challenges the country is going through. Insecurity, corruption, poor infrastructure, dilapidated health care, poor state of education, lack of power for industrial development, lack of clean drinking water, high crime rates etc. if you are in this country you can agree with those viewpoints as the true state of affairs in this nation.
South Sudan is a country of so many opportunities and contradictions as illustrated above. The people of this nation are proud in their own situation. They’re full of hope even in situations of despair. A BBC correspondent once remarked that people seem to go about their business as nothing happened. This was at the time of fuel shortages and long motor queues for the least fuel were the order of the day.
South Sudan is truly a country of contradictions. It is torn between Western aid and the urge to engineer its own development. There is also the path of direct foreign investment. Whichever way it goes the country must prepare itself for the long haul.
Western aid is like a resource curse in resource rich nations. Donor nations announce millions and billions every year for poor nations like South Sudan. At the sheer announcement of figures one would imagine that the recipient nations are going to get developed in a short period. This is a wishful thinking. The western aid itself is followed by those organizations and individuals who solicit it and a huge chunk of it flows back to countries of origin. On the other hand most nations have realized that it further comes with strings attached examples, gay rights characterized by homosexuality.
Contrarily, it has been acknowledged that money syphoned out by those in power is more than double the Western aid the needy countries receive.
This aid has been accused of stifling self-reliance, kills creativity and promotes idleness. This is evident when one considers the situation of refugees and the internally displace persons.
However, south Sudan is not in a position to maintain what the donor governments developed. The cases in points are the roads and bridges build by aid. These infrastructures are built and handed over to the government to look after against future tear and damages by weather. It is abundantly clear that road infrastructure is damaged by erosion, accidents and negligence.
It is not clear whose responsibility the infrastructure falls to. There are many levels of government in the country; the national, State and County governments. These levels of government have failed to coordinate their work appropriately to share out which infrastructure in which area belongs to whom.
The proponents of federalism argue that its full implementation can bring efficient service delivery closer to the grass roots. True but the country is already in federalism only that it is not directly referred to as such. Decentralization is a form of federalism. The only problem hindering service delivery is negligence and complacency among various level governments as above. In the case of Juba City that is shared among national, State and County governments. Juba county or Juba city council would think that roads and bridge maintenance is a responsibility of the State government but the State government in turn would think that the national government is the right entity to look for it that physical infrastructure is developed and subsequently maintained by that level of government.
Without the division of roles and responsibilities among numerous levels of the government, the work will not get done. Here, constant consultation and communication is imperative. Any road that joins the State to foreign nations is the responsibility of national government. The same applies to any roads that join more than one state. Roads that join more than one county are the responsibility of state government. Any roads joining more than one Payam belong to the county government. This criterion goes down to Bomas and villages. This is in line with the collection and division of revenue at these levels.
You can reach the author at his email: <alierjokdeng@gmail.com>
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