Residents in South Sudan’s Yei River State have urged the government to ensure services are delivered, despite the economic and political challenges the state is facing.
In interviews conducted by Radio Tamazuj on Thursday, several residents cited domestic tax collections, area production tax, business operation and employment taxes as some of the forms of taxation that government could employ to raise revenues for service delivery.
Asina Betty, a retail trader in Yei town, said government imposes taxes on her monthly, but very little progress is seen in development and services.
“If they are collecting taxes, they should budget for long term development programs such as permanent road construction, new buildings in Yei town and we need modern development so that we feel government is delivering services to the community,” she said.
People at the grass-roots level, Asina stressed, mainly need clean water, good roads, health centers, schools, electricity and security.
Moses Amani, a resident in Yei town, said he has been paying taxes to the government from his carpentry workshop, but whatever he pays is not used for development and delivering services in return.
“It’s not good for us to pay taxes and we don’t see changes in terms of service delivery out of the money we pay. We want to see tangible things happening in Yei town,” said Amani.
“We are ready to pay more taxes to the government, if the government delivers services in return to its citizens,” he added.
For his part, the mayor of Yei municipality, Alfathi Morgan, said efforts are underway to upgrade Yei town into a city, through construction of roads and the full implementation of all development programs.
“We are going to build the roads in the residential areas, deliver clean water, electricity and start development programs together,” said Alfathi.
“I know there are challenges, but we need your support,” he added.
On Wednesday, the state governor chaired a monitoring and evaluation meeting, which officials at all levels of the state attended.
The state information minister, Azaria Duku said the meeting was to review quarterly budget expenditures of all government institutions.
“Accountability and transparency are core values of the state government. The revenues we use belong to the people and people expect output from revenues collected by government,” said Duku.