Bring your families back to South Sudan, Jonglei Governor tells officials April 24, 2013 (BOR) - Jonglei state’s governor Kuol Manyang Juuk, has set January of next year as a deadline for all ministers, MPs and top civil servants to bring their families back to South Sudan.
Governor Manyang stopped short of saying that he would sack those who did not abide by the order, but told Sudan Tribune he was serious about seeing it implemented. He also said that all children of Jonglei officials - with the exception of those studying at universities - must return to South Sudan before the end of the year. Families of many south Sudanese officials live outside the country, in order for their children to receive good education, health care, employment and a standard of life that the young nation, recovering from decades of civil war and underdevelopment, cannot offer. Manyang, however, believes that the practice is detrimental as it encourages officials to take time off to visit relatives even when they have already taken all their annual leave. The governor did not, however, specify how many leave days government officials are granted a year, but said that many of them "create a reason to go" such as illness of a family member or that they themselves need a medical check up. “Why even go for medical [treatment] in those counties when we have our own doctors here. Myself, I never went for medical check up anywhere”, Manyang said in an interview on Wednesday. “All the government officials who have their children and families outside of South Sudan, should bring them back as latest [as] January. I have been talking to them in many occasions and they have not been taking me seriously”, said Manyang. The governor said he does not see the the "logic of us keeping our children and families outside of South Sudan as we are now an independent country." "We fought the war of liberation and spilling blood, losing a lot of people, many people martyred and we voted for independence, and now we are independent, what do we do next, is to build national horizontally," he stressed. Manyang said he discovered, during his last visit to Uganda, that 40,000 children from South Sudan were studying in and around the country’s capital, Kampala. The fees that we are paying in Uganda should have been spent in South Sudan, he said, arguing that his policy should be rolled out across the country, which has one of the worst levels for literacy in world. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "South Sudan Info - The Kob" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
