By Philip Buda Ladu<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Transitional National Legislative Assembly (TNLA) barred the media from covering Monday sitting where 11 national ministers and commissioner general of the National Revenue Authority were questioned.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n In a rare show of events, the national parliament decided to suspend media and public access to the long-overdue sitting, where the lawmakers sought to grill in camera, the officials over ailing economy and worsening food insecurity.<\/p>\n The Parliament summoned the Commissioner General of the National Revenue Authority, Africano Mande, but he failed to appear on several occasions to answer MPs\u2019 queries about the non-oil revenue collections and its usage.<\/p>\n Furthermore, 11 national ministers were also summoned alongside Africano Mande to respond to queries on the economic situation and the hunger crisis, sending some citizens near graves in the country.<\/p>\n After several absconds by the cabinet ministers and revenue authority boss, most, if not all, seemed to have finally appeared during Monday\u2019s sitting, which was unfortunately closed for the public and media coverage.<\/p>\n The spokesperson of the Transitional National Legislative Assembly, Oliver Mori Benjamin, told journalists before the start of the grilling session that this particular sitting was \u2018in camera\u2019 that\u2019s provided for by law.<\/p>\n \u201cThe conduct of business says that there is a clause for sitting in camera. So when there is a \u201csitting in camera\u201d, that means it is only the members of parliament, no spectators, no journalists,\u201d Mori told reporters.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no public in the gallery to follow the sitting as usual; no journalist is allowed in the gallery there to cover the sitting live.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the parliament\u2019s spokesperson, there is sometimes a closed-door session in the August House, which is in the law.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a constitutional right that parliament can sometimes hold its sittings in camera,\u201d he emphasized. \u201cIt is not our choice or the choice of the speaker; it is there by law, so if it is decided that the sitting is in camera, that\u2019s it, and nobody questions it.\u201d<\/p>\n Mori, however, underlined that the media is not totally banned from reporting about the sitting, stating that \u201cmedia is not completely deprived the following day, as I told you at 9:00 a.m. when you people come around, we will give you what has happened.\u201d<\/p>\n The 11 ministers who might have been grilled by the MPs yesterday include the Minister of Finance and Planning, the Minister of Petroleum, the Minister of Mining, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, the Minister of Livestock and Fisheries, and the Minister of Trade and Industry.<\/p>\n Others are the Minister of Environment and Forestry, the Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation, the Minister of Land, Housing, and Urban Development, the Minister of Wildlife Conservation and Tourism, and the Minister of Investment, plus the Commissioner General of South Sudan Revenue Authority.<\/p>\n In early July 2024, President Salva Kiir Mayardit noted that the country had enough money to cater for government expenditures and service delivery to citizens, but corruption was emptying the national coppers.<\/p>\n The head of state who spoke during the swearing-in of the current minister of finance, Dr. Marial Dongrin Ater, echoed the severity of the worsening economic situation in the country, where civil servants go for months without pay.<\/p>\n He acknowledged that for nine solid months, people have not received their salaries, yet the country has money.<\/p>\n \u201cThe money from the non-oil revenues is enough to pay people and to do everything; let us believe that,\u201d Kiir emphasized. “Otherwise, we have a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n Kiir believes that to close the loopholes leaking the country\u2019s budget there has to has to be one single account where collections from the non-oil revenue sector are wired to rather than the individual accounts of corrupt officials.<\/p>\n \u201cThe solution would be that you must have one single account because this money that is being collected has everybody’s own account, and these accounts do not come to the people,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone (official) takes to his Zol Kebir (big man) that he only knows.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Philip Buda Ladu The Transitional National Legislative Assembly (TNLA) barred the media from covering Monday sitting where 11 national ministers and commissioner general of the National Revenue Authority were questioned. In a rare show of events, the national parliament decided to suspend media and public access to the[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":28003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Lawmakers-during-sitting-at-the-national-parliament.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28004,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28002\/revisions\/28004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}