Magwi County embarks on community-based voluntary road repair

The communities in Magwi County of Eastern Equatoria State have embarked on voluntary rehabilitation of all roads linking Magwi town to the payams.

Last week the community members gathered in Abara, Iwiri Payam, and repaired 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.

Magwi County Commissioner, David Otto Ramsem, said the 9-kilometer road leading to Magwi Town was rehabilitated last Friday after the community members contributed some money for hiring trucks and buying stones that helped in filling the potholes.

“On Friday, the community of Abara Payam came together to make sure that the potholes are filled up. As the local government, we work together and it is the government that organized them. 

“What we are doing as local government is to provide the food, water, and fuel for the trucks that carry the stones and the community also were able to carry some of the stones,” Otto told The City Review in a telephone interview yesterday. 

He said the local government in Magwi in collaboration with the community has the plan to rehabilitate some of the major roads connecting to Magwi Town as they wait for the state government road rehabilitation program.

He said they planned to hold a meeting with the community members of Obbo Payam on October 23, to ensure that their road heading to Magwi Town is also rehabilitated.

“The challenge of our community is money. You know the current situation in South Sudan has affected all the people; the interest is there but how to make it is a problem,” he said.

He appealed to the community to cooperate with the government so that they can close up those potholes to ease the movement of people and goods.

Past constructions

The road leading from Magwi to Lobone Payam at the borders with Uganda was constructed by the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 2015. 

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 kilometers 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. 

“I don’t have the report as the County Commissioner, what I know is the WFP is only buying food from my community and they put it in the stores,” he said. 

“Most of their stores are filled with food but still, the road is bad. Why do they buy food and roads are bad, they don’t even work on the road. I never heard any information from the WFP concerning opening some parts of the roads in my area,” David.