A military instructor said over 4,000 Unified Forces at Muom Training Centre are going hungry, revealing that the soldiers have not been given food or medicines for seven months.
Muom Training Camp is located in Leer County of South Sudan’s Unity State. The forces who are awaiting deployment graduated over six months ago.
Speaking to Radio Tamazuj over the weekend, Brig. Gen. Peter Par Tai, the head of the training center, said the situation of 4,000 Unified Forces was dire and appealed for immediate food and medicine supplies.
“We have been here for seven months without food and medical supplies. We have not been able to meet our basic needs since we left our cantonment sites to come to this training center. We arrived at Muom Training Center almost three years ago,” he explained.
Explaining the life inside Muom Training Center, Brig. Gen. Peter Phar Tai stated, “The forces left cantonment sites in February 2020 to join Muom Training Center. Since we arrived here, we have not had medicines and food for our unified forces. Most of the 4,000 Unified Forces depend on fishing from the rivers. After learning that the training center had no food and medicine, the unified forces refused to leave. The soldiers stayed in the training center and depended on fishing and collecting firewood from the forests as a source of their livelihood.”
Brig. Gen. Peter Par Tai revealed that an unknown number of soldiers succumbed to sickness and starvation at the training center. “The situation is tough, and an unknown number of people died in the training center because of sickness and hunger. Since we arrived at Muom Training Center, there has been no food or medicines. We are waiting for nothing,” he lamented.
When reached for comment, Maj. Gen. Lul Ruai Koang, the army spokesperson, confirmed that the shortage of medicine and food supplies extends to the Upper Nile region, encompassing not only Muom Training Center in Unity State.
He assured that efforts are underway to supply food to the Upper Nile region, with logistics teams preparing to distribute food to training centers before the end of the month.
“The logistics team is loading the food destined for all training centers in the Upper Nile region and will depart very soon to these training centers before the end of this month,” he concluded.
In August 2022, South Sudan graduated its first group of unified armed forces from former rival groups. The formation of unified army is prerequisite of the 2018 peace agreement.
The first batch of the unified forces graduated without firearms, with the transitional government blaming the arms embargo on South Sudan imposed by the United Nations Security Council. They carried wooden guns instead.
According to the peace deal, South Sudan is supposed to train and graduate a unified force of 83,000 personnel to take charge of security during the transitional period.