The Minister of Culture, Youth, and Sports in Western Bahr el Ghazal state has raised concerns about the illegal parceling of public playgrounds and allocation as private plots to individuals in Wau town.
During an exclusive interview with Radio Tamazuj on Tuesday, Minister Mohamed Ali Goni revealed that two playgrounds in the Al-Nahla and Inqaz neighborhoods have already been affected.
Goni urged the state lands ministry to expeditiously revoke the demarcation and allotment of the public land into private plots.
“There was a complaint from the youth in the area who said they saw some government officials carrying out land demarcation. We met with the minister of public utilities, and he advised me to visit the area. We then went there with the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports’ acting director general, director of administration, and the director of sports,” he explained. “After the visit, we were surprised that the same people resumed their work. We presented the issue to Acting Governor Zakaria Joseph Garang and he assured us that he would resolve it. We just want to assure the public that we are not part of what is going on at the Inqaz playground.
“The playgrounds are useful to the public and can benefit youth and the community in terms of social activities and sports,” Goni added.
The minister urged the state Ministry of Lands, Housing, and Public Utilities to relocate those whom they dished out the land.
“We have a mandate to establish these playgrounds for sports use or other needs and it is not the prerogative of the Ministry of Lands to allocate the land because they are designated as public open spaces,” Goni stated.
When contacted, the Director General in the state Ministry of Lands, Housing, and Public Utilities, Karlo Bitali Kuku, dismissed Minister Goni’s claims and said the said pieces of land are under his docket.
“I am very happy to be interviewed about the claims that there is a piece of land belonging to the Ministry of Culture, Youth, and Sports in Inqaz that our ministry is allocating to people. I am strongly dismissing this in the strongest terms because whenever a team goes out to survey any area, I am always aware,” he said. “Inqaz was surveyed in 1994 during the reign of former Governor George Kongor and there are some people near that place. We have open spaces in our town plan map and they do not belong to the Ministry of Culture, Youth, and Sports.”
“These open spaces are the responsibility of the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Public Utilities and if there are services health facilities or schools that did not get space, it is our ministry to issue such lands,” Bitali added.
He said that there are people who have been residing in the open spaces near Inqaz Square for a long time without being compensated yet they are entitled to recompense.
“The people residing in the open spaces near Inqaz Square brought their application to our ministry requesting formal land allocation and I sent a team to go to the playground to verify and it was confirmed that about 17 families have lived there for a long time,” he explained. “As per their request, and as a ministry, we provide services to the citizens and we do not want them to squat for a long time, so we decided to send a survey team. Since the area is not a playground, the area was demarcated and allotted to the 17 residents.”
“I am strongly informing the Ministry of Culture that this land does not belong to them because we, the lands ministry, are the ones who tell any institution what land belongs to them and ask them to process the necessary ownership documents,” Bitali asserted.
Meanwhile, Arkangelo Elia Nyiluaj, a resident in the disputed area, said before the land was allotted to them, they contacted the Ministry of Culture, Youth, and Sports for verification.
“There was information that the land belongs to the Ministry of Culture, Youth, and Sports and as a result, we went to them and told them that we are 17 civilians living on the land but they said it is a playground and they went to verify. The following day they asked us to go back to their office and informed us that the land does not qualify to be a playground. They said the squares face east and west and that if there are football games in the morning or evening, there will be sunshine, so the place was allotted to us,” he narrated. “This was after we obtained a letter from them (culture and sports ministry). The letter was passed to the director of lands who gave it to survey. The survey office told us that if the land is a playground, then the lands ministry will not allot it to us. They told us to go back to the culture ministry and get documents for the land because the former can claim it as theirs.”
Nyiluaj said that although they returned to the Ministry of Culture, Youth, and Sports for documents, the ministry itself did not have a title for the land.
“We went to them (culture ministry) for more than a week but they did not have documents and when we returned to the survey office, they told us that if the culture ministry does not have the documents for the land, then it does not belong to them,” he recounted. “The survey office advised us to go to our local chief so that he can write a letter on our behalf to the lands ministry. After that, the survey department gave us surveyors to demarcate the land and we were allotted the plots. This is what happened.”
“We are not criminals, we are residents of the area and the land does not belong to the Ministry of Culture, Youth, and Sports because they do not have a bonafide title or document indicating otherwise,” Nyiluaj concluded.