By Chol Makol Riak
The Union of Journalists of South Sudan (UJOSS) has organized a three days training in Jonglei state capital, Bor.
The training aims at mentoring journalists on conflict sensitive gender reporting, ethical, accurate reporting, safety and protection of journalists and reporting on constitution making process.
Speaking to reporters at the opening of the training, Daniel Majak Kuany, secretary general for UJOSS appreciated the Ministry of Information in Jonglei state for their cooperation, urging the participants to pay attention.
“One thing that what I would like to stress is that I’m requesting you the participants to focus and be interactive in the training, seek as much as you can because this opportunity is rare for us in the states. I would also like to say that choosing journalism once you have chosen it, it is like choosing a right partner, it always comes with a lot of responsibility,” Daniel said.
However, Daniel urged journalists to be careful while doing their work in order not to interfere with the laws.
“If you do your work professionally, if you do your work adhering to code of conduct you will be able to do your work freely and you will be able to serve the community and inform our communities about the things related to the constitution of South Sudan. We have three media laws and do you know them and if you don’t it is a high time for you now to know,” he added.
He added that elections for leadership of UJOSS state coordination office in Jonglei state will be conducted at the end of the training.
“I would like to tell you that at the end of this training we will be having elections so start making your choice, whom do you want to elect as your state coordinator, Secretary general, and the finance because as you know that we came into office last year on may 28th and now we are due to make a year so we need to reconstitute such that we have the issues of observatory committees this alinement of reporting on issues of media landscape in the country and this is the purpose of reconstituting this state branches,” he said.
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Meanwhile, Doreen Loboko, communication and information specialist working with UNESCO said that her organization is aiming at creating conducive environment for journalists in South Sudan.
“We work in order to promote press freedom that would pave ways for access to information and that is why we always work with journalists. And for the case of the journalists we also involve in areas of capacity building,” Doreen said.
She urged the media outlets in South Sudan to focus and put more efforts on promoting peace among the citizens of South Sudan.
“I wanted to encourage media to focus on promoting peace and development initiatives because we need to concentrate on developmental initiatives, we all know that we have challenges but we need to do the best we can so we make sure we make our environment conducive,” she added.
For his part, Muhmad Chuol Peter, the director general at Jonglei state’s ministry of information and communication said his ministry is working hand in hand with the media to ensure the public is aware of the things happening in the state.
“We in the ministry of information are working very hard with the journalists to make sure we inform our citizens of Jonglei state and South Sudan as a whole, we are also making sure we disseminate the messages of peace in the state and ensure that the public is aware about the progress on the R-ACRSS,” Muhamad said.
“UNESCO is really doing a great work and we appreciate that and we are looking forward for more training on capacity building especially the new journalists who are coming up. We have journalists in the state capital but we are urging you (UNESCO) to extend this programme to county level” he added.
He urged the participants to focus on what they are going to be trained on for their career development.
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