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Cattle raiding threatens NGO’s grassroots projects

By Mary Poni

A Women-led national NGO, Rural Women for Development South Sudan (RWDSS) has decried cattle raiding insecurity in rural areas as hampering implementation of some of their projects in the state, grassroots.

The Rural Women Development in South Sudan is based in Kapoeta North of Eastern Equatoria State where incidents of cattle raiding are common, terrorizing and threatening livelihoods at the grassroots especially for farming communities.

The acting Executive Director for RWDSS, Amoniyo Gloria Amule told journalists during the handing over of grant being received from USAID to more than six National NGOs in Juba that she was happy for the outstanding support but the only fear is the issue of cattle ridding jeopardizing their projects implementation.

“Our biggest challenge in the state is about the cattle raiders, these guys don’t care about the wellbeing of the people and it is a threat to us,” Gloria said.

She said that the challenges Eastern Equatoria was facing before the project could come up was the issue of cattle raiding but they are looking forward with the community where the projects are going to be implemented to make sure that the work will be done successfully without any interference of cruel acts.

She said the cattle riders have no mercy, according to the previous experience, if they failed to get animals, they end up hurting people any how hence, security is one of the threating issues they are fearing.

The activities in the project to be implemented in the Kapoeta North areas include Vegetables seeds, Agriculture tools, VSLA Toolkits, Grinding mill machine, sorghum thresher and maize Sheller.

Gloria stated that her charity organization is going to help the community a lot through the grinding mill and sorghum grinding machine if security threats are brought to zero.

Before women take a lot of time in pounding maize or grains for floor but with the availability of the modern grinding machines, it has shortened their time that will be used to do other activities.

“If I am able to process my sorghum within five minutes, I can be able to go and fetch water and doing other kinds of home activities hence some of the women in the state are using stones for grinding and others don’t have and in most cases, it takes time and distance to grind their sorghum, maize, millets among others,”

RWDSS executive director hinted that they are not working independently but together with the community as they now have their own group leader saying she wants them to own this project.

“This project is not for rural women; we are just here to usher out to the community and they (community) will take up the project,” she said. “It is a community project so they will be having leaders who will be managing for the purpose of sustainability.

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