The influx of vehicles bearing South Sudan’s number plates into Arua district, Uganda, worries the local people
By Mawien Marko, Bugema University, Uganda
January 10, 2017 (SSB) — Since December last year, the influx of vehicles bearing south Sudan’s number plates has increased drastically and most of them are government vehicles which includes V8s, land cruiser, Prados etc. All these vehicles have old number plates of the former central equatorial state(CE) and some few bearing new South Sudan number plates (SSD), The rise of South Sudanese vehicles in Arua, Uganda has worried both locals and south Sudanese living in the district and in the nation at large. This could prove the presence of south Sudanese rebels in west Nile.
The government for that reason must try to investigate this unwanted influx of official vehicles into the border towns because it seems government vehicles have either been stolen or have been sneaked into Uganda by groups of gangs and therefore, I believe that south Sudan’s government have strong bilateral ties with Uganda’s government to cooperate as sisterly countries in order to deal with these criminals who smuggled government cars on daily basis.
I also recommend those immigration officers working at the borders to make sure each vehicle that crosses to Uganda is well checked and the reason of crossing must be a genuine. Why should government cars be allowed to cross into other countries without clear reasons? Of course, the vehicle must have clear purpose of traveling to and fro, the time of the stay has to be stipulated on the pass upon crossing into another country. I have nothing to do with passengers’ vehicles, they are known and they are found in the parks.
South Sudan is a sovereign state that has a constitution where policies governing each institution are stipulated to regulate each government’s sector. It causes government a lot of money to purchase each vehicle for the department, it is our moral responsibility as informed and concerned citizens to take the lead in monitoring of country’s resources. A country development comes when the citizens of that particular country are united and become peace lovers. In order for our country to regain from this senseless political tension that has ruined the integrity of the 64 tribes of the Republic of South Sudan.
The government has a role to play in provision of basic services such as security, shelter, health services, education and infrastructure for the betterments of the civil population and nurturing the future generations who will take on the responsibilities and the leadership of this great nation. The most important of all these basic services I mentioned above is education. Education is the act of gaining knowledge or skills from one person to another; it brings prosperity to an individual and to a country as a whole because it has a crucial and formative effect on one’s mind, character and behavior.
It is a continuous process in life, which is passed from one generation to another through reading, writing and oral skills view education as an important aspect of development in any country because it brings evolution in technology as new discoveries emerge through scientific research carried over years through formal and informal education. Knowledge and skills acquired through education are used by professionals in a given country to spearhead the country’s development; hence countries whose citizens embrace education are advanced in knowledge and skills that put them forward in terms of technology and industrialization.
Therefore, Hon. Minister Deng Deng Hoc and the minister of higher education have to work tirelessly in order to change the mindset of our civil populations. Citizens have to be aware of the country’s policies so that they will fully know what is good and bad. These citizens who are fond of looting government vehicles and sell them into other countries will surely come to their senses when they are well educated. Education is the birth right to every citizen of the country so, the government of South Sudan should run the programs by which every citizen of the country becomes educated & after the government it’s the responsibility of the people to educate their family members.
The main thing that government should do is encourage religious institutions to educate the children who are orphans. Mainly the orphan children are left uneducated so this should be the step to educate those children’s. Education is not only the factor that affects the development of any country, but it affects the surrounding or an individual. Education increases the personality of any person in many ways like education changes the behavior, life style, the way of dressing, sitting & talking also. Education is the most important factor for our freedom or democracy.
In conclusion, a country like South Sudan can only get out of vicious economic cycle of poverty if its citizens are hardworking and innovative but when citizens turn to loot the little resources available then it will never move forward in term of development. Developing countries have often been referred to as third world countries because they lack good education systems to steer -head technological, social and economic reforms for development to be achieved of which South Sudan is included.
Such a country like South Sudan is characterized by poverty, poor infrastructure, high rates of unemployment, corruption, high mortality rates and high levels of illiteracy in country that might have triggered insecurity and theft cases such smuggling of government vehicles into other countries. For the case of South Sudanese, it is mostly rampant corruption and high level of illiteracy which is killing us.
On the other hand, developed countries embrace education as a way of life and their citizens acquire relevant skills and technical knowledge through education, which make such countries to remain far much ahead in socio-economic and technological development. With the introduction of modern technology, online education is on the rise; hence third world countries could embrace online education to acquire knowledge and skills that are relevant to development of their countries.
This will, without any doubt, get out most of developing countries from where they are stuck in the fight to catch up with the first world. Furthermore, education is the pillar of national development, without which many developing countries languish in to poverty and debts as they depend on donations and debts from developed countries and revenue collected by the government is not adequate to pay for these debts, leading to huge increase in interests.
Government should therefore ensure that schools are enough and modernized to help children from marginalized areas to acquire skills that will be beneficial to their career lives. Moreover, well-trained teachers should be deployed to pass knowledge and skills to the children and to crown it all, teachers and students should be provided with conducive learning environment for better understanding.
Mawienmarko is a third year student of Bugema University, Uganda. He can be can be contacted on mawienmarng2@gmail.com
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