By Hou Akot Hou
The Vice president and chair of the service delivery cluster, Hussein Abdelbagi Akol has announced government plans to provide 50 water points to the Bahr el Ghazal region saying they are working around the clock to improve services delivery more especially provision of clean water.
Speaking to media at Aweil airstrip early this week while on his return to Juba, after a tour to the Bahr el Ghazal region recently, Akol said since he went there in December last year he had seen and heard a lot about problems people face on the ground.
“When I came last year, I learnt that a lot of things are happening especially hunger and yet many people have arable land which is very fertile but situated in the far areas of the border but without good water points,” he said.
“The original lands where people are still existing have become infertile and as such, they don’t produce enough yield. People have interest in moving far away from their original residences in search of food through farming but no water points in highland areas where they can till groundnuts, sorghums, sesame among others,” he continued.
Abdelbagi stated the president had approved the water yards to be installed in areas where the farmers who are interested in farming in lands which are potential for agriculture so that they can do farming.
He said the water yards will be distributed to areas with agricultural farms bordering Warrap, Abyei, Akon and Wau where people can have access to the water points as it can serve more than ten thousand people. The VP for service delivery cluster added that these water points have been approved and will arrive soon to the locals.
“As I started a tour with the president last week from Juba, four of the water installation machines have started coming here and we requested them (water drilling companies) to be the ones to do the installation or drilling,” he remarked.
Abdelbagi said they have a decided to drill these water points during the dry season to avoid the work coming to standstill as rainy season complicates the activities.
He said the governors of the four Bahr el Ghazal regions will have to work with him to ensure that these 50 water yards are drilled in areas where there are no water points.
VP Abdelbagi hinted that he also got people complaining about the issue of communication networks adding they are going to as well install ten network antennas.
“We have started installing three network stations, one in Majok Yithiou, Warguet and Malith-Alek Yai among the ten networks we intended to install in Aweil. The far-flung areas need network simply because they don’t have means of communicating emergencies,” he noted.
The service delivery cluster chair explained that the water yards where they will be put will also have network so that people go and farm in new unused lands to curb hunger.
He added that the issue of feeder roads is being looked at as Africa Resource Corporation, ARC is contracted to finish up the work.