The Director of Relief and Rehabilitation Commission in Jonglei Mr. Gabriel Deng Ajak briefing the media [©Gurtong]
By Jacob Achiek Jok
BOR, 25th January 2012 [Gurtong] - The Jonglei State government convened a crisis meeting yesterday with humanitarian agencies together with the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC), in order to understand the Aid agencies’ operations in the conflict-hit Counties following concerns from area members of parliament (MPs).
The Jonglei State Minister of Law Enforcement Mr. Gabriel Duop Lam said that, “we called the joint meeting with humanitarian agencies to discuss some of the issue raised by the State MPs representing the Lou-Nuer community who are concerned over the absence of humanitarian services delivered to their affected people.”
Duop added that, “the MPs are saying why are the humanitarian services only in Pibor County while unconsidering the rest of the affected areas of Lou-Nuer community? He also explained that the meeting was based on the current humanitarian situation in Pibor, greater Lou and Bor areas.
The RRC Director Mr. Gabriel Deng Ajak said that, “we apologize for the delay of humanitarian services to some of the areas, but now the humanitarian agencies and NGOs will be able to respond immediately to the uncovered areas and foodstuffs will be distributed soon.”
“The issues raised by the MPs are as a result of some challenges in our State such as inaccessibility due to lack of roads causing the unexpected delays to deliver services to the affected areas,” Gabriel Deng reiterated.
“Nevertheless, we are trying to double our efforts to make sure that relief services will reach in time. This has been evident in Pibor County where we have assisted 38,000 people and today morning (yesterday) we sent a team to Yuai where humanitarian assessment will be conducted and relief assistance will follow suit,” Deng added.
“The issue is similar in Duk Padiet where 16,000 displaced persons have been assisted by running a 15 days emergency feeding program and will later be followed by a one month feeding program,” he clarified.
He explained further that what humanitarian agencies do first is to conduct an assessment to gauge priorities, to determine the number of the people affected by the crisis then followed by services immediately.
“In a report we received 2 days ago, 16,000 people were displaced in Duk County,” he said.
“You all know that in Jonglei there are no roads connecting the State capital with its Counties and this make us to delay in distributing food to the far stretched Counties, we must use UNMISS helicopters but nowadays the aircrafts are very busy because of the latest attacks in Pibor,” the Director said.