Author: Obaj Okuj | Published: 10 hours ago
Aerial view of Juba city. (Photo: Charles Wote).
A member of the National Legislative Assembly has raised concern over ongoing security operations in the capital, Juba, saying some officers are disrespecting lawmakers and frightening families during house-to-house searches.
Hon. Nyayang Johnson told the Assembly that members of parliament are being mistreated by security personnel who accuse them of being responsible for the country’s problems.
“For us, members of the parliament, such attitudes are not acceptable. Right, honourable speaker, we are members of the parliament with our expired ID, because our ID, it is expired.
“When you present to them, I’m a member of parliament, I should be such in a certain way, they will never listen to you, they will tell you, you are the cause of all the problems of South Sudan, and they will walk to your house the way they want it,” Hon. Nyayang said.
The lawmaker added that members of parliament are representatives of the people and deserve to be treated with respect when security personnel visit their homes.
“Right, honourable speaker, we are representative of the people. Yes, we accept the sign. And by the law, we’re supposed to have an arm in our house, the guard. But very unfortunately, we don’t have the guard because our situation cannot afford us to pay for our guard. So I want the house with a committee of security, because they say it is us who passed certain resolution. When an arm come to your house with his full arm, he even is scared, the kids in the house, the way they put their arm, they should at least present to you the paper that has been approved by the division that allowed them to site.
“Because the same places may come to you at night and rob you in a different form. So right, honourable speaker, we want our houses as a member of parliament to be set in a very responsible manner.”
In response, Deputy Speaker Parmena Awerial acknowledged the frustration expressed by the lawmaker but said the challenges being faced are part of the country’s wider difficulties.
“Honourable Nyayang said that they said that we are the cause. I don’t know what cause do we have. If we see now the issue of finances, our economic situation, it is all over us. Even the MPs are not getting money now. So it is the situation of the country for all of us, not individuals,” the Deputy Speaker said.
He added that all lawmakers, including himself, are using expired identification cards due to administrative delays.
“They have seen us here talking all this morning, the Minister of Petroleum last time, the Minister of Finance, and they present the papers here. So they have seen that we, the members of the assembly, we have nothing here. We don’t print money or we don’t collect taxes. The money is collected by sentence section. And then we go and get money like them. So we don’t have money here.
The Assembly has referred the matter to the Security Committee for further discussion.
We will refer this to the security, say that you can follow that, you can write to them, the chairman of the security. The other thing is that we have got IDs which has expired, all of us, including mine, not you alone.”
