Dear friends: I would like to thank all of the people who have attended the briefing yesterday despite the snow. It was a well-attended event. Below is the written briefing I had shared with them. It was great time to meet and share the information with old pals in the twin cities. Those who live far away or did not attend yesterday briefing, here is your turn. The teleconference meeting will take place on Sunday November 16, 2014. The meeting will start at 9pm central time. Access code: 712-432-0900 and pin code: 194230. Thank you all for your attention Unity in practice By Apee Ojulu Ochudho Introductory Remarks Bloomington, MN - Community leaders, Church leaders and the general public, I would like to thank you all for making time for this occasion. I know life in USA here is very busy and making time like this is a big commitment. The purpose of today meeting is to brief you about the developments in the Greater Pibor Administrative Area (GPAA) and to answer your questions you may have. Before I proceed further, I would like to thank you President Salva Kiir Manyardit for his tolerance and for accepting our grievances. Without his insightful, we would not have been where we are today. In the same manner, I would like to thank you Hon. Chief Administrator David Yau Yau for his exceptional commitment to his people of GPAA and our public for standing together during the difficult times of the struggle. Unity in practice The creation of GPAA has created a lot of opportunities for four communities to unite among themselves. One prime example is that since GPAA was established our communities have been living in peace among themselves. The past politics of destruction that allows our communities to fight among communities have stopped. As a result, our people are now returning to their old villages they left due to misunderstanding among themselves. This is very important development. Furthermore, it is has also created an opportunity for our four communities to participate in the national government. We no longer have to go through Bor to communicate our issues to the national government. We have a direct channel to communicate our issues to the national government without the hinder that used to be the case. We have developed a plan to streamline our government and to be closer to our people. In the past, commissioners, Payam and Boma administrators, police officers, teachers and wildlife officers used to stay at the headquarters of the county or outside their county. We plan to change this. We intend to have these government officers to stay in their areas. This will allow our people to get the necessary services they used to not get. We have also introduced a new system to involve our citizens in the decision making, especially on who they want to be commissioners. When we were still part of Jonglei our communities do not have that opportunity to nominate one of our sons or daughter for the positions of commissioners. When we had the chance to nominate such person, we used to get someone else when the announcement was made. Now our citizens can nominate their son or daughter and get the person they have nominated. Government formation This new vision was what we have adopted during the formation of government. Since the announcement of the establishment of GPAA, we have been working very hard to form the government. These efforts have been challenging because of lack of physical infrastructure and lack of structure in place before this one. Yet, despite these challenges, we have managed at least for the most part to establish the government. We started first with the selection of the commissioners. The process to select commissioners we thought it should be done by citizens. To do this, the Chief Administrator appointed seven coordinators, each from each county and travelled with us to seven counties. Their purpose was to select commissioners. When we reach each county, these seven coordinators and two advisers would sit down with fifty people-ten women, ten youth, ten church people, ten businesspeople and traditional leaders. These fifty people would chose people in some cases they would choose one person to be the commissioner but in other cases they would select more people. For instance, when we were in Gumuruk County, the people selected one person, Akot Maza, when we were in Pochalla South County, the people selected one person, Omot Achwan Awan and Veritet County, people selected Pastor James Aliyi. But other four counties -Jebel Boma County, Pochalla North County, Pibor County and Lekangole County - selected more than one person for the commissionership of those counties. Where one person was selected, the leadership took that person but where the people selected more than one person, the leadership selected one person out of whichever the number. When we came to the selection of administrators, we picked one person from each county. We have ten administrators and thus seven were distributed equally to all seven counties. Three were left to the headquarters to give whatever it sees fit. For members of the area council, we divided the counties into four Payams. Since each county has six members of the area council, we picked one person from each Payam in county. We allocated one seat to a female to make the 25 percent that the peace agreement required. Then headquarter selected one person from each county from whichever Payam to make the sixth for all counties. We have requested from the president to give us seats at the national assembly to represent the counties that do not have representation at that assembly. We have also asked the president to give positions in the Foreign Service. All of these requests are still pending. In conclusion, we have brought decision-making to our citizens. When our citizens are in charge, we think they will be able to make the right decision for our communities. Thank you all for your attention! I am now available to take your questions. Thank you very much all!
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 17:26:27 +0000
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