The commissioner of Magwi County said they welcome investigations into the alleged blocking of supervisors during the ongoing secondary school leaving exams in the area.
Last week, National Minister of General Education Awut Deng Achuil said serious violations of examination rules and regulations took place in Magwi County of Eastern Equatoria State.
“We received an alert of a breach in our system. We immediately sent our secretary general for examinations together with national security officers for inspection of stations in Magwi and Nimule. Unfortunately, upon arrival at the police station in Nimule, the secretary general and his team of national security officers were harassed and called criminals who wanted to steal exams in Nimule by a police officer in charge of the station and his personnel,” Awut said at a press conference last Friday.
Minister Awut said the ministry had initiated an investigation into the examinations breach in Magwi County and that there would be consequences.
Reacting to Minister Awut’s remark, Magwi County Commissioner David otto Remson told Radio Tamazuj this afternoon that the national minister sent a team from Juba without the knowledge of the county authorities. He, however, said they welcome investigations by the education ministry.
“The exam papers are always packed at the police station and then supervised by the security, but unfortunately, the team that came from Juba came at around 9 pm. They wanted to open the police station so that they go and check the exam papers, which is not allowed,” Commissioner David said.
“They should have called the inspector of police and made sure the security was aware that there are people coming from Juba, and if they are sent from Juba, they should have a document. The police had to take the measures because somebody cannot just come to open the police post and check what is there immediately,” he added.
Meanwhile, Lokulang Faustino, the Director of Quality Assurance at the State Ministry of Education, said:” there is no information anyway that there is an investigation committee coming from Juba; we have not got any report of that kind.”
The South Sudan Certificate of Secondary Education exams, which kicked off across the country on the 20th of March, are scheduled to end by the 31st of March.