Magwi County places roads on top of development plans

Authorities in Magwi County of Eastern Equatoria State have singled road rehabilitation as a major priority in their local government strategic plan for 2022-2025.

This came after the state government including the stakeholders conducted a wide consultation with all villages in the county.

David Otto Remson, Magwi County Commissioner, said the county authorities in collaboration with the stakeholders conducted consultations within communities on their needs.

He said the communities suggested roads as a priority to enable them to have access to health Centres and markets.

“The priority of the communities we put in our strategic plan was the roads so that they can get access to market and health centre. It is not only that, roads also boost security and we are located as the people of Magwi in green belt area where the road must be a priority,” Otto said.

He was speaking to The City Review in a telephone interview yesterday.

On Wednesday authorities in Magwi County endorsed the County’s 2022-2025 Strategic Development Plan.

Otto said the Strategy sets out key actions needed to achieve the mission of improving roads, education, health, housing, water and agriculture.

“The strategic development plan will act as the principle guiding frameworks for the government and non-state actors in the transformation of the County,” said Otto in a statement released by the Office of the Governor Torit and seen by The City Review yesterday.

 “We have already finished the plan and we are left with the implementation that will start immediately by next year because peace is prevailing and people have started coming back home from the refugees’ camps,” he said. 

Last month communities embarked on voluntary rehabilitation of all roads linking Magwi town to the payams. The community members from Abara, Iwiri Payam managed to repair the road leading to Magwi to access Magwi Primary Health Care Centre (PHCC).

This comes after the heavy rains cut off most communities from accessing services in Magwi Town as most of the roads have become impassable.

However, in 2018 United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) received an €8 million (US$9 million) contribution from the Kingdom of the Netherlands to improve smallholder farmers’ access to markets by rehabilitating and maintaining roads in South Sudan the next four years.

The project— which was dubbed the United Nations’ Partnership for Recovery and Resilience approach—was supposed to enable WFP to improve 250 kilometres of roads. This was to assure year-round access to more than 20 markets for 10,000 smallholder farmers and residents alike. 

In Eastern and Western Equatoria states, Magwi and Yambio counties were supposed to benefit from the project, but since the donation in 2018, no road rehabilitation had been carried out in Magwi County. The area is currently cut off due to poor roads.