By William Madouk
Central Equatoria State Minister of Education, Mr. Cirisio Zakaria Lado must be chilling, after allegations of illegal sale of public-school land, emanated.
On Friday, a tour of Supiri Secondary School, in Juba, by National Minister of General Education and Instruction, Awut Deng and CES governor Augustino Jadallah brought the odious deal to light.
According to the office of the governor, the tour which aimed to investigate school land sold to investors eventually put Mr. Cirisio in a tight spot and likely to face the wrath of the law.
Minister Awut, while speaking to the media said that her docket is considering taking legal actions against Central Equatoria state minister, Mr. Cirisio Zakaria Lado.
“So, legal processes will be taken against him, because this is becoming too much,” said Deng.
She cited that as she was passing by Supiri School, a construction of a huge building that is ongoing caught her attention, prompting her to send an inspection team to find out what was going on.
“It was unfortunate, that again the Supiri that we knew all these months and years again has been sold off by the CES Ministry of General Education and the papers are with me,” she lamented.
“I don’t even know why companies will even accept to destroy our education system in our country. there is plenty of land in CES that can be given by the government,” Ms. Deng quizzed.
To her, Mr. Cirisio has sold off and privatized most of the public school lands in town.
“He has turned them to private schools, they dismiss our children after four hours and then take over from there and charge people to pay and without knowledge of the governor,”
“This has been going on, there is a resolution and I think we are taking legal action against the minister of General Education,”
Waving bundles of papers, the minister unveiled documents of a long list of schools devoured by the illegal land dealers in Juba city.
“Here is are the documents, he has been issuing out selling schools – from one school to another school, Juba Commercial is sold and now Supiri is sold, Juba Day is sold, Malakia is Sold, Gumbo is sold,” she showed the documents.
Meanwhile, Central Equatoria State governor, Augustino Jadallah issued a stern warning, saying any minister involved in such malpractices, faces the full force of the law.
“The Ministry of Education doesn’t have the right to make investments within a school, we are going to take legal action against the person who made orders that, this place should be sold off,” said Jadallah.
“This should be a lesson to everybody. no ministry should make investment in government land,” he added.
However, Supiri Primary school headmaster, informed the visiting delegation that directives for selling the portion of the school land came from the state Ministry of General Education.
Early last month, the council of ministries approved a memo to dislodge individuals illegally occupying public school land.
This came after the minister of General Education and Instruction, requested the cabinet in her presentation to approve demolition of illegally constructed building to allow her docket to reclaim all grabbed schoolland.
The deputy minister of Information, Jacob Maiju Korok, said the memo would ban sale and privatisation of school land and also hold land grabbers accountable.