The minority leader of South Sudan’s parliament Onyoti Adigo of the SPLM-DC party said the 1000 tractors bought by Salva Kiir will be “wasted” because the government did not make advance preparations for their usage.
“When you brought such type of tractors, you need to prepare land, you need to know how many feddans are you going to cultivate with these tractors in each state. I am hearing that they are going to make cooperative societies in the area yet there is no law brought out for cooperative societies on how they are going to operate. So these tractors will be wasted,” Adigo said.
President Kiir purchased the tractors earlier this year with the stated purpose of addressing South Sudan’s hunger problem. Since the beginning of the year, 2.5 million citizens were projected to be facing crisis levels of food insecurity. Earlier this week, that number has been revised up to 4.6 million.
Adigo accused the government of downplaying the situation earlier in the year.
“Now when the government trying to get up from its sleeping point, you see that the president brought around 1000 tractors and unfortunately these tractors have no farming equipments,” Adigo said. “It’s only a tractor and they are there lying and possible if they spend a year some their spare parts may disappear.”
“Even the Minister has admitted that there are some certain equipment which can make this tractors to work and these are not there,” the lawmaker added. “We are almost going to the rain season without these tractors being utilized.”
As the planting season begins, the tractors have yet to be distributed to the states. South Sudan’s Agriculture Ministry asked foreign donors to help move the tractors for use as there is not yet funding for maintanence or transportation of the machines.
Adigo said any project to buy and distribute tractors should be preceded by proper studies and should be led by people with technical know-how rather than the president and politicians.
He said the right solution for the government is to give these tractors to the agricultural or cooperative banks that can bring money to the government itself, or to hire the tractors out to companies which can also make money.