CARDO South Sudan has handed over a new police station to the community of Kuajiena Payam of Jur River County in Western Bahr el Ghazal State.
The facility comprises of three main offices, a Duty Room, and segregated cells for Female, Male, Juvenile male, and Juvenile female as well the 3 stances of Latrines block adjacent to the main building. Highly empowered solar systems have been equally installed to provide light and power to the whole station.
The construction of Kuajiena police station was made possible with the funding from UNMISS under Quick Impact Project (QIP) 2022-2022 cycle.
The Deputy Governor of Western Bahr el Ghazal State Hon. Zackaria Joseph Garang, who is also the acting Governor, graced the handing over of the new premises. In his key remarks, he acknowledged the trust of the community for his government. “When you hear western Bahr el Ghazal state is a peaceful and stable state this is because such kind of work we are doing like opening police stations, construction of roads, and hospitals, Citizens will feel safe and they will not create any problems, Garang asserted”
Hon. Acting Governor also apericated the important of this facility stating that it will reduce the crimes rate in the area specially with coming of cattle seasonal movement in the coming couple of months, “We are expecting the coming of cattle seasonal movement to be more peaceful than last year because of the developmental project done in Kuajiena by building this police station that will contribute in peace and stability, he added”
For his part, the UNMISS Wau HoFO Representative has urged the state authority and the SSNPS to maintain and sustain the facility according to the project’s objective and in line with human rights. “We expect SSNPS to use this facility in accordance with the objective of the project which includes reinforcing law and order and curving criminality, do all this while demonstrating professionalism and capacity to ensure the protection of Kuajiena citizens with due respect to the human right”
Speaking during the same event, Mr. Orasio Opiyo the Executive Director for CARDO has call upon the state authority to provide a prosecutor at the stations, which challenges across the county, “issue of the prosecutor, I think it has been an issue in most of the police stations, you find that the police prosecutor is not available at the stations which make some other cases to delay so we expect that the authority will look into this and ensure there is prosecutor which is having the office allocated in this station”
Mr. Orasio also urges the authority concerned to adhere to the commitment made during the initial stages of the project. “There were some commitments that were made during the writing of the proposal processes, and I would wish having structures like this, is one thing, but sustainability, operationalization and effective functionality of the station is very key of as it was agreed”
Some of these commitments made including deployment of up to 40+ police personnel to the Station and I would like to see into it that such commitment is implemented so that when we come back for monitoring in the next two months, we can find all these in place. Opiyo concluded
The chief of Kuajiena on behave of his community has indeed appreciated the work well done by CARDO through partnership with UNMISS and stressed that this station will stop the inhuman way of arresting the culprits in Kuajiena. “With this police station, the issue where culprits are tied down to the roots of a tree will stop, because we have the police station now, anyone who commits a crime should be brought here in the police station but not to be tied to a root of a tree again”
#special thanks to the United-Nations-Mission-in-South-Sudan #UNMISS
