The executive director of El Geneina Locality in Sudan’s West Darfur State, Issa Hamad, has said the town whose buildings and other infrastructure were destroyed by war is slowly rebuilding itself and on a path to recovery.
He told this publication during an exclusive interview that through the efforts of youth initiatives and well-wishers, including civil servants, the security situation has returned to normal.
“We hope that this town will return to its normal life and that services and business activities with other states and the neighboring countries can resume. However, we lack the routine support that we used to receive from the national government like health services,” he explained. “Despite these challenges, we still depend on initiatives from individuals and organizations. We now depend totally on humanitarian organizations in terms of provisions for health, education, water, and environment and they are effectively providing the citizens with food security. Most of the UN aid organizations are unable to reach the state yet but we are continuing and our situation is now can be termed as stable. We still hope that they will be allowed to enter the state so that they can increase the service provisions to our people.”
“At the moment, we depend on our resources and the locality is now providing what I would call a fair provision of services to our citizens but the major services that need huge financing remain difficult and we all depend on aid organizations,” Hamad added.
He said the town’s water supply is linked to electricity and that for over a year since the war began, the town has not received fuel for power stations.
“Through local efforts, we have put down some plans for the provision of water and we have decided to charge beneficiaries a monthly fee according to the budget. Our vision is that if people continue to pay, the water services will continue. Some organizations have also provided us with fuel and this has been helpful to supply water points in some areas,” he stated. “The main generator of the state consumes about 100 barrels of fuel in a day and this is costly. Initially, we used to depend on Khartoum for the provision of fuel to enable our people to enjoy electricity. This supply is no longer there. Our alternative plan is that we share our people to contribute to this provision of services until the situation returns to normal.”
Regarding the local economy, Hamad said the ongoing war has affected Sudan’s economy and even the local currency is nearly collapsing against all other currencies in the region.
“We have been intervening in controlling this situation but we have discovered that our intervention is not helpful because prices in the market are centered in the law of purchasing power. That means when there is a high demand for a particular item, the prices will increase and once the demand is low, the prices also go down,” he said. “We have formed an economic committee tasked with monitoring the prices and manipulation in the market. Despite the work of this committee, the market has its say. It has not been effective on the issue of prices in the market.”
According to Hamad, the local authorities want services to reach all the people in the state and for the communities to share in the provision of security and other service.
“We presented a proposal to the governor and he accepted it and formed a committee headed by the director of the social department deputized by the executive director of El Geneina Locality and other related departments as members,” he explained. “We formed another specialized branch committee tasked with supervising the formation of popular committees in every neighborhood. These committees will represent their area and be the link between the government and organizations with their people. If there is any plan for service delivery, they can be in charge of organizing and coordinating the work.”
“During the formation period, we observed democratic procedures in the selection process and called on all residents of the area for a meeting and gave them an open ground to choose their leaders openly without fear,” he added.
Hamad said that when I assumed office, he found no revenue to implement the budget which was poorly planned.
“We know that preparing any budget is based on priorities and the plan of the previous budget was set wrongly and did not fulfill the ambitions of El Geneina Locality because it is one of the largest localities in West Darfur state. In the previous budget, taxation was very low and we have addressed the Council of Ministers in the state to call for an extraordinary meeting to discuss the issue of the budget,” he stated. “The other challenge is that our locality is lacking a lot of infrastructure, such as offices and mobility. All of these are not available. We also have an issue with salaries. There are no sources of revenue to pay salaries for our civil servants. They are now working in an emergency and we only give them little incentives. This led to the absence of officials in the offices. Since they are not paid, some decided to go and seek other opportunities somewhere else.”
According to Hamad, about 99 percent of civil servants are now in the market seeking better ways of living because they have to look after their families yet and work for the government for free.
He lauded the initiatives by the youth, women, and communities in developing the area,
“El Geneina is a beautiful town and if we put our efforts, work, and hands together, we will develop this town. We admit that some of our essential services such as the provision of electricity are not working as before but if we all put our efforts together, it will resume soon,” Hamad said. “We applaud all our youth who are working hand in hand to regain the name and the social life in El Geneina to be as before.”