South Sudan official expresses concerns as peace soldiers keep deserting training centers over lack of food

JUBA – A senior party representative to South Sudan’s ceasefire monitoring body has expressed concern as soldiers continue to desert training sites due to a lack of food and medicines.

Speaking during the CTSAMVM technical meeting in Juba on Wednesday, Brig. Gen Samuel Chan, a senior member of the South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA) at the ceasefire monitoring mechanism, said the National Transitional Committee (NTC) a body that oversees the implementation of the 2018 peace deal has not been providing soldiers with food.

“Training centers are still experiencing a lack of food, medicine, and shelters and therefore I would like for the second time to urge the leadership of NTC to provide food and medicine to the forces in the training center,” Chan said.

Chan said the living conditions at training centers continue to deteriorate.

“If graduation is going to happen very soon, there is a need to revitalize these training centers because most of them have been deserted by the forces,” Chan said.

Under the 2018 revitalized peace deal, South Sudan is supposed to train and graduate 83,000 personnel to take charge of security during the ongoing transitional period.

These troops will make up the police, army, intelligence, and prison services.

The transitional unity government, formed in February 2020, has in the past cited financial constraints for the delay in the graduation of unified forces.

Chan called for the expeditious graduation of unified forces as stipulated in the 2018 peace accord.

“There is also a need to speed up the process of the unification of command because what was unified was high command the operational level is still under the control of the chairman of the parties to a revitalized agreement which makes it difficult for SSPDF and other organized force command to exercise command and control of overall forces.”

He called on Presidency to intervene in ensuring that training centers are supplied with the necessary logistics to prevent soldiers from deserting the centers.

“I would also request the president to speed up that process for us to have one national army that will be under the control of the president, and as we prepare for these phase two, there is also a need for those forces in the cantonment to be supplied with logistics,” he said.