An SPLM parliamentarian representing the Jie community of Kapoeta East County in the Eastern Equatoria State Legislative Assembly on Monday raised an alarm over the lack of basic services in his area.
Zachariah Ngoletiang Naburio said that when he recently visited his constituency for assessment, he found that wildfires had destroyed crops in July and that much-needed services schools, health centers, water, and roads among other things are lacking.
He however said the Jie community is enjoying some relative peace and have good relations with their neighbors the Toposa and Murle.
“Jie is very bad and there is no food, no medicine and there is serious famine. The area has not received food aid in the last five years. There are also no schools, no water and everything is missing but the security is good,” he said. “On my agenda I want the Jie to be helped with food, drugs, schools, telephone network, and roads.”
“The lives of the Jie are not good and I take information to the assembly all the time and the government knows about our situation in Jie,” Ngoletiang added.
For his part, Abdalla Angelo Lokeno, the SPLM-IO nominated commissioner for Kapoeta East County, confirmed the lack of services and said he has severally complained about the suffering of the Jie community but nothing has been done to alleviate the grim situation.”
“I have raised this problem several times on different radios that there are no schools, roads and that the place completely lacks services,” he said. “There is no water and dams have to be built. We have spoken about this issue and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) pledged to construct 4 dams but until now they have not implemented it yet.”
“Wildfires also recently razed over 100 houses of the Jie and no humanitarian agency has intervened yet the affected people have no shelter, no saucepans, no blankets,” Lokeno added.
Meanwhile, Augustine Okuma, the chairperson of the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) in Eastern Equatoria State, confirmed that the Jie area lacks vital services but said the government is working on addressing the issue.
“The issue of poor roads in the Jie area and lack of services is known and the government is planning to intervene to help those people. We have schools but they are not enough and another thing is that the salaries are too low,” he explained. “Most of the people are leaving the education sector and go and work for NGOs because of greener pastures.”
“The government increased salaries by 400 percent to attract people back and the teachers are going to come back,” Okuma added.