The Civil Society Network in Western Equatoria State has commended the Necessary Unified Forces (NUF) for being efficient in their task of protecting people in the areas where they are deployed.
Last December 3,000 unified forces were sent to Yambio by the SSPDF leadership to take charge of security in the state.
Wanga Emmanuel, the chairperson of the Civil Society Network in the state, told Radio Tamazuj that since the unified forces were deployed, crime has been reduced, and they are not robbing and extorting money from civilians like the previous force which used to also grab phones from people.
“The civil society wants to thank the national and state governments for bringing and supporting the unified forces. Based on the experiences and views of the communities, the unified forces have done the best job starting from Christmas and have demonstrated professionalism in their work. These are the forces that the South Sudanese have been yearning for. We want soldiers to keep professionalism in their job,” he said. “They do not harass civilians or rob phones in the night like it used to happen in the past. There has been improvement in security in the whole of Western Equatoria since Christmas.”
Wanga added: “When there is a crime, we hear that the perpetrators have been apprehended and we want them to be taken to court to make sure justice prevails.”
He appealed to the national and state governments to ensure that the welfare of the unified forces is catered for so that they continue working diligently.
The activist also urged the government to speed up the training and unification of the army so that they are deployed in other parts of the state and the country in time for the elections slated for December 2014.
“The reasons why citizens were panicking is because when soldiers are deployed, they always commit atrocities, beat, rob phones and unlawfully detain people at night but these unified forces are doing their work without causing those problems,” he stressed. “As civil society, we did not expect them to show shoe such professionalism, even the community was not expecting that soldiers would be moving in the village and not harass them like what is happening in Yambio in the past.”
Early in January, Governor Gen. Alfred Futuyo Karaba visited the unified forces and promised to take care of them and directed them to take charge of the security of the state.
Relatedly, Wanga revealed that the Civil Society Network has since Wednesday been conducting a roundtable discussion with political parties in the state to analyze which chapters of the 2018 peace agreement have been implemented. He said they also discussed how the parties can organize for the elections. ‘
“Yesterday (Wednesday), we engaged all the political parties in Western Equatoria on how they will promote democratic governance in the state,” stated. “Today (Thursday), we are collecting the resolutions and also the views on the progress of the peace agreement from youth, women, chiefs, and political leaders.”