The Minister of Finance and Public Service in South Sudan’s Yei River State has resigned from his position citing “poor leadership” in the state government led by Governor David Lokonga Moses.
In his resignation letter seen by Radio Tamazuj, Moses Simon Soro said that the current leadership in the state led to the ongoing suffering of local residents in Yei.
“I have resigned from my position as state minister of finance and public service for Yei River State in protest against the bad leadership in the state that has caused our people a great deal of suffering,” he said.
Soro further said the state government does not have a clear vision for service delivery to the people of the state, saying he will not continue serving in a government institution without providing any services to citizens.
“My main interest of joining the state government was to work as a team with other colleagues to provide services to our people. Occupying a job without offering something to our people to alleviate their suffering is nothing to me,” said Soro.
” I feel guilty doing that to be honest, we are currently spending a lot of our people’s money on security without accountability, but the people are secure,”he added.
He pointed out that the state governor has recently appointed top civil servants without qualifications.“Appointments of civil servants especially director generals in the seven ministries were done without proper consultations and without following the procedures,”he said.
“How can you recruit a junior officer to become director general like what happened in the ministry of local government and others?”he asked.
The ex-minister noted that Governor David Lokonga Moses wants to bring an end to the current rebelion around Yei River militarily and that he completely ignored any dialogue to resolve the worsening security situation peacfully.
“Majority of our people are either internally displaced or have crossed to Uganda to seek safety as refugees from their own government, who are you leading now? Why did you let this happen? Why didn’t you intervene when people started complaining about harassments, killings, arbitrary arrests of their children, torture and some of them were killed?” he asked.
The former government official described the governor’s leadership style as primitive and corrupt, saying the state government lacks transparency and accountability.
Soro called on the people of South Sudan to shun tribalism and work for peace so as to bring an end to the ongoing suffering across the country.“Iam urging all South Sudanese to work for peace and end this senseless war, we need to develop our country, and offer services to our people by building decent schools and hospitals,”he said.
“We want to improve our infrastructure by constructing roads and railways as well as designing effective systems and programs of governance instead of killing each other,”he added.
Last month, the Commissioner of Lujulo County resigned from his position citing human rights violations by SPLA government forces including the murders of several people in his county.
File photo: Moses Simon Soro