By Ochaya Jackson
The Egyptian Ambassador to South Sudan Dr. Mohamed M. Kadah has on Thursday denied allegations that South Sudanese who are travelling to Egypt for medical treatment or for other reasons fall prey of their body parts being removed unknowingly. Mohamed however admitted that it was sometimes back during the Arab spring during 2011 and 2012, saying it was done by gangs who were involved in illegal immigration.
“This was at a point of time [when] Egypt was facing a lot of chaos after the revolution in 2011 and 2012 to 2013….this was a time there was security vacuum and this kind of incident some of them I read in Newspaper in Egypt when I had no idea about coming to South Sudan. It was gangs doing illegal immigration that included South Sudanese, Eritreans, Somalis, and others [and] were basically heading to Israel or elsewhere through Sinai and it was mostly in Sinai. And some of them were arrested this is something from the past it is not happening [now] I assure you”, said Ambassador Mohamed during a press briefing at the Egyptian Embassy in Juba about the ties between Egypt and South Sudan.
It came after the high level visit by the Egyptian delegation to Juba and as well as the inauguration of Egyptian Medical center in which according to the Ambassador it will reduce the number of those seeking treatment, be in Egypt or elsewhere.
The Ambassador said that Egypt offers about four hundred scholarships yearly to South Sudanese without any restriction in areas of studies.
“We offer around 400 plus Scholarships annually in Egyptian Universities for higher education, and postgraduate studies. The conditions and requirement change from time to time depending on the development in education system. But there is no restriction on areas [of studies] like if someone is willing to apply to study medicine or engineering he/she definitely can”, Ambassador Mohamed informed.
He further said the criteria for selections are age, gender, and secondary certificate but he COVID-19 has hindered next year’s plan.
“The requirement is usually related to age, certificate of secondary education in case of higher education……because of coronavirus pandemic we did not receive information about the position of scholarships for next year”, adding “a big chunk of scholarship goes to South Sudanese community in Egypt itself. But there are different branches of scholarships; the biggest is usually announced online through the Ministry of Education. There are scholarships that are managed by the Embassy in this case we usually act according to the criteria, we have some other scholarships that are administered directly to the Embassy, we try to give priority to ladies and young women given disparity in gender in terms of education” Mohamed explained.