Dear President Salva Kiir: Juba teaching hospital has run out of fuel and University lecturers are on strike over salaries
By Pal Chol Nyan, Juba, South Sudan
May 24, 2016 (SSB) — As a concerned citizen of this country, allow me Your Excellency to send you my heartfelt gratitude and elation for having brought peace back to our country. I also congratulate wholeheartedly you on the formation of the TGONU in which our dashed hopes lie. When you appended your signature on the ARCISS in the Freedom Hall amidst mammoth and jubilant crowds, although many people said you had reservations, it rekindled our hopes that the situation will get back to normalcy, a thing we are yet to see.
Since you took up arms with your colleagues in all wars to liberate the Southerners from the yoke of the Arab slavery until the time of independence, all and sundry have been your staunch supporters and champion of the cause .When the FVP came, I hastily wrote to him an open letter, urging him to collaborate with you to ensure that the agreement is implemented. The people of South Sudan from all walks of life especially our people from the grassroots have born the worst ever brunt of the war of the SPLM for the last two and half years. What they refer to as the SPLM internal war.
They have been denied basic services. Many analysts said it is worse than the 21 years old of war with the North in terms of the wanton destruction of lives, properties and the basic infrastructures put in place during the 6 years of an interim period and 5 years after elections all the way to the independence. During the war with the North, our people were united cohesively regardless of their religion, tribes and communities simply because the cause for which arms were taken up was one and that was to emancipate ourselves from others’ misrule and oppression.
The question that comes to one’s mind is why now fighting ourselves when we attained what we all fought for? What will our comrades who felt in the battles and for other causes think of us? Your Excellency, when the people of South Sudan voted for you for the Presidency with the independence in the back of their minds, they did it with all our conscience in an excited manner. It has never occurred to any body’s mind that we would someday turn our guns against ourselves.
This is peculiar in our case. It has happened in many countries in the continents. Mr., President, with peace now prevailing and seeing you seated side by side with your brother and longtime comrade in arms Dr. Riek Machar despite all that had transpired, I am personally hopeful and of the considered opinion that the next step would be to reconcile our belligerent tribes and communities, heal the psychological wounds and restore the broken social fabric and to rebuild what we have destroyed. All the towns, cities and villages dismantled in the senseless war and razed to the ground need to be reconstructed.
Our displaced people need to be resettled and rehabilitated. Mr. President, The other issue of greatest concern is the deteriorating economic situation that has strangled our country. Many families cannot afford a day’s meal. Many children have either abandoned schools or not registered because their parents cannot afford to pay the school fees. They have become delinquents, laden the streets of Juba and specialized in crimes including grabbing women’s handbags. They have become beggars and scavenge on the left-overs in the restaurants.
Something must be done to transform and reform them because they are still useful. The hospitals are in bad shape and it is attributed to the current economic crisis. The Universities’ teachers are threatening to strike for not having been paid their salaries. The question that arises is that if the Universities Lecturers and their families have nothing to eat, how do we expect them to come and stand in the halls lecturing with shrunken bellies? Nobody in his/her right and sound mind would fail to agree with me as it pertinently points where it hurts most.
Their needs and concerns, Mr. President, ought to be addressed. As a science student, I was taught that once the person is hungry, the hypothalamic area in the central nervous system which is responsible for concentration will be affected. This situation scientifically applies to our Professors and all the Teaching Staff of our Universities. If this situation affects our academia, what would happen to an ordinary average person given how things economically are?
Mr. President, we know from day one that you are a kindhearted person especially when, on assuming office as the then Sudan FVP and the President of the Government of Southern Sudan, you brought on board all the splintered armed groups hostile to the SPLM/A.I cannot believe my eyes that we the helpless South Sudanese you helped liberated are subjected to this enormous suffering under your watch.
I know that this country has well informed and more knowledgeable economists who can help revive our economy if they are actually involved in the decision makings related to the economic issues. Many fingers are pointed at the coterie of advisors who are privileged to see you so often but who may have their hidden agendas. They do not help you in having shaped the things in the interests of our people.
As an elected and legitimate President, fully mandated by the constitution, everything is within your reach just with a stroke of a pen. Mr. President, we will stand side by side with you along with your colleagues in the process of the implementation of ARCISS and beyond because we are quite confident that this agreement is paramount .It would be a negligence if it slips out of our hands.
In conclusion, I extend my sincere appreciations and thanks to the armies of the two warring factions for honoring the cessation of hostilities and all forms of animosities. I urge those who think their grievances have not been addressed to respond to call for peace and cease fire or high way armed robberies.
The security arrangements must be urgently implemented so that we see who will again cause an insecurity. I wish you all the best of luck and good health.
The author is a writer in Juba and reachable at palcholnyan@yahoo.com
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