Africa-Press – South-Sudan. The graduation of unified forces which was initially slated for early November would likely be delayed due to lack of funds to carry out the remaining tasks, said JDB, the member and SSPDF SPOX, Major-general Lul Ruai Koang.
General Koang who is part of the Joint Defense Board (JDB) a body in charge of forces in the training centers, said that there were a number of tasks and preparations- including screening of the forces in various training centers across the country were yet to be accomplished as different committees lacked funds to carry out the activities.
“Thegraduation of unified forces was scheduled for the first week of this month,but chances are that it will not happen this first week because we have not yetreceive funding from the NTC for the teams to be dispatched to training centers,”said the General Koang who is also the Spokesperson of the South Sudan People’sDefense Forces (SSPDF).
Last month, National Transitional Committee (NTC) the body charged with supervising the implementation of the 2018 peace agreement headed by presidential advisor on security affairs, Tut Gatluak Manime said that 40 million U.S dollars was needed to complete the graduation of 53,000 unified forces.
The 53, 000 forces were part of the 83,000 forces drawn from government and opposition parties that have been undergoing training since 2019 to form the army as required by the peace agreement.
The SSPDF Spokesperson said the 53,000 forces would first undergo screening to determine whether they were qualified to serve in the military services. He said those not fit to serve in active military service would be transferred to Disarmament and Demobilization Reintegration Commission(DDR) for retirement.
“The teamsthat had been formed to go and do screening in the three regions (Upper Nile,Equatoria and Bahr el Ghazal)are on standby and ready to go as soon as the fundsare availed.
“The initialfigure of 83,000 was the entire force that was going to be put in trainingcenters in phases; phase 1 and phase 2however we have been quoting 53,000 asthe force that is scheduled for graduation. But since we are going for screeningof course,we are not going to graduate all 53,000 because we are expecting someof them to be disqualified from military service and other organized forcesbecause we saw a lot of elderly people among the forces in the trainingcenters. We also saw wounded heroes and sickly servicemen so, once thescreening is going to be done, whoever does not meet the criteria set will bedisqualified and transferred to DDR,” he said.
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