By Bida Elly David
The Council of Ministers yesterday in their extra ordinary meeting resolved and approved clearance and cleaning of water ways along the Nile as a mechanism to fight climate change and its impact to the eco-system as well as pave ways to navigation.
This development came following a lengthy deliberation on a presentation by the ministry of Environment in regards to the negative impacts that South Sudan faced as a result of drought and flooding driven from climatic change.
After thorough deliberation on the presentation made by the Minister of Environment and Forestry, the cabinet adopted and passed the resolution to a high level committee headed by the Minister of Presidential Affairs and the membership of the ministries concerned with the project.
Speaking to the media after the meeting, Michael Makuei Lueth, the Minister of Information and gov’t spokesperson said the cleaning and clearing of the water ways would enable the river flow smoothly as well as keep the water clean for the citizens to use.
He cautioned people against misunderstanding cleaning and clearing water ways as dredging saying these are different activities all together with various schemes of work.
“Cleaning and clearing of the water ways means removing whatever obstacles from the way, clearing the land and the water ways so that they can be used for navigation and any other issues,” he stated.
“The whole of South Sudan now is under water because some of the rivers are completely blocked making the water to flow out of the river,”
“The difference between cleaning and clearing is that dredging involves digging down deeply while clearing and cleaning means removal of the shrubs and segmentation to only open ways for navigation,” he clarified.
Makuei further said that the implementation of this project shall come into effect after thorough studies and research would be carried to determine the areas of concern.
He said global change has not only affected South Sudan but many Countries across the world demanding for urgent intervention to its management and total outcome.
“After studies, the cleaning and clearing of the water ways will be done accordingly,” he noted.
The minister stressed that those weeds have to be removed such that water can run the normal way.
“This was approved and will be implemented accordingly after studies. Global change is not only affecting South Sudan. It is affecting the whole world and because of the global environmental change, there are some Countries around the world that are now suffering from droughts in Europe.”
“Some of the rivers are drying up in Europe as well as the Dead Sea in Israel and we are here dying of water. So these are the negative impacts of environmental change,” he underlined.
Makuei said that the project has to be subjected to thorough studies to suggest how best the Country lives with the availability of water for proper utilization.