National Minister of Animal Resources, Fisheries and Tourism is advising cattle keepers to emphasize on commercial use rather than for dowry.
Onyoti Adigo Nyikwach regrets the use of cattle for marriages, resulting to cattle raiding.
The Minister says many communal conflicts are recurring among communities in South Sudan because of cattle wrestling and theft.
“Eastern Equatoria is one of the leading livestock in South Sudan, we really need a lot of work, it is being kept for prestige and marriages only, but not on commercial basis that is why now over 100 can die just in one day or in two days’ waste, so we need to transform the livestock in a different way being sold, this thing will not come unless we change the mindset of our people of keeping cattle in South Sudan, we need our livestock to be commercially oriented that is why most of the problem are happening in south Sudan is through livestock communities going for communal fighting by stealing, cattle rustling, how can we solve this, we can help them if we think and work together”.
Eastern Equatoria State Minister of Animal Resources, Fisheries and Tourism, Angelo William Geri, outlines numerous challenges facing livestock in the region.
He says some of them include lack of human resources, laboratory and curative medicines.
“over 3000 animals move from Eastern Equatoria to Central Equatoria State and probably to other state, but the challenges how we can address this is we need to expand our call chain in Kapoeta, so that we can be able to store enough vaccine and curative medicines in the life change, the other issue is that we have started building Laboratory, if that Laboratory is done in Kapoeta it will be able to address the issue of animal disease together with partners FAO having the control of disease will improve the quality and add value to our animals, at moment we need also to empower people at the moment the height and skin program is dead in the state, we need to establish height and skin cooperative”, said Minister.
Eastern Equatoria State Governor, Louis Lobong Lojore notes that a lot of livestock move to the neighboring areas in search of water and green pasture during dry season.
“Our livestock continues moving, they cross to Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, and also internally they cross to Jonglei, and greater Pibor administrative area, looking for water and grass particularly during dry season. Now the type of drugs that we have, they are brought from Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia and if you go to Kapoeta where it is stored nobody is monitoring, the livestock is dying in hundreds in the last three to four month in greater Kapoeta mind alone I lost 150 cattle up now they are still dying nothing has been done. We expect people to be sent to field really you have to be in the field, and they should also decide where their main office is supposed to be” Governor added.
Food and Agricultural Organization or FAO representative in South Sudan, Meshack Malo, says the organization has expanded its offices to greater Kapoeta and Torit to save livestock.
He promises to take samples from animals dying in Kapoeta for examination so as to find out the disease attacking and killing them in large numbers.
“last week, we have divided this office in to two, another one was in greater Kapoeta, so we hope to advance our work a lot in that area, secondly we are going to have an extension officer, we did for last week also we just recruited for Kapoeta north, to make sure that they are in the field, and he can be able to educate people more, we are going to pay to get samples of this animals to check a find which disease is that, because otherwise we are spending money for nothing, now with the laboratory that we have just build we can now test 80 percent of the disease in south Sudan”, said FAO Representative
The officials were speaking during the visit of the National Minister of Livestock, Fisheries, Industry and FAO representative in Torit at the State Secretariat.