Makuei says dredging is not a new practice but ‘used to be done in all rivers’

JUBA – South Sudan information minister Michael Makuei Lueth has said that dredging of rivers is not a new practice, and it used to be done to clear the Nile of blockages hampering the movement of people and water flow.

“To me dredging – the way I understood it – is the dredging that I knew when I was a schoolboy. Dredging used to be done in all rivers including in Juba and what I understood by dredging is clearing Nile from all obstacle abstracting navigation,” Makuei said during launch of public consultation on water management on Sunday.

“This is how I came to understood it and it was done ever since, it is us when we started war of liberation that stopped it and when we stopped it that time till the agreement we didn’t dredged again,” the senior government official added.

Makuei who is also the official government spokesman said due to the weed inside the rivers, boats now stop in Mangala and soon would be stopping in Jonglei state’s capital Bor due to the growing amount of weed inside the Nile.

“Now all the boats stop in Mangala and soon they will be stopping in Bor. This is how I understood the dredging and this how I came to know the importance of dredging, especially when I last went to Bentiu to find out from Lake Bentiu [from Lake NO], no way up to Bentiu, leave alone those ways going to Masherarek and all these areas up to Wau,” Makuei said.

“All these have been stopped and have been forgotten, leave alone those days the Baboor (boats) used to leave from Malakal to Nasir to Akoba up to Pibor it does not go to Akoba now,” he added.

He continued: “Those days dredging was option to open ways for our movements, I don’t know the dredging might have taken a different meanings but the dredging I know those days is what I know now, what need to know is we must differentiate between the dredging and digging of the canal.”