The governor of Western Bahr el Ghazal State has called on state parliamentarians and the citizenry of the state to take up agriculture for self-reliance and poverty eradication.
Sarah Cleto Rial made the remarks in Wau on Tuesday while addressing the state legislators during the opening of the state parliament for the new calendar.
“As we are gaining peace, unity, and harmony in the state, yet the state is facing challenges of an influx of the returnees and refugees due to unrest in the neighboring countries,” she said. “That means all of us should concentrate on economic activities, especially in the agricultural sector, to enable us to build a society that is free of poverty and hunger and dependency.”
She also informed the house that based on the state’s strategic plan, her government is working in the form of three main clusters of governance, economics, and service delivery.
“The main objective of establishing these clusters is to ensure a proper coordination of all government programs at the state and all the government levels,” Governor Cleto said. “Each of these clusters comprises of the related ministers.”
Meanwhile, the speaker of the Western Bahr el Ghazal State Legislative Assembly, Mohamedeen Ibrahim Mohamedeen, said some of the challenges the state is facing are due to an inadequate number of counties because the state only has three counties.
“Politically, the creation of the counties was the problem of Western Bahr el Ghazal State that led to inadequate services,” he opined. “Increasing the number of counties in the state will solve the issue of inadequate services delivery since some of the states in the country are getting enough allocation of development funds from the national government.”
Speaker Ibrahim said Western Bahr el Ghazal State has a big population but that it is not considered by the national government when allocating development funds.
Reacting to the governor’s speech, John Pangarsio, a state lawmaker, said the governor outlined good policies which require that she works with the parliament to have implemented.
“The policy statement of the government is not bad but there is a saying that she who cares about us is from us,” he said. “So, if what the governor read can be implemented, then it is good but if not, then it will be a problem for us in the assembly.”
Another legislator, Peter Andel, said it was the first time Governor made such a speech in the assembly since her appointment.
“We have never gotten such a speech since she was appointed governor but I appreciated her today in the hall. The governor said she lacks offices premises and furniture, especially for the institutions that were created by the peace agreement,” he said. “I can say it is not true because we have funds in the state,” he said. “We have revenue collections at the level of the state and we have Personal Income Taxes which are collected from NGOs in hard currency and I think these can do what we want in the state.”