{"id":7590,"date":"2022-07-15T04:10:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T04:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onecitizendaily.com\/?p=7590"},"modified":"2022-07-14T21:33:02","modified_gmt":"2022-07-14T21:33:02","slug":"bentiu-residents-at-naam-river-for-manual-dredging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/15\/bentiu-residents-at-naam-river-for-manual-dredging\/","title":{"rendered":"Bentiu residents at Naam River for manual dredging"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Several women seen at Naam river doing manual dredging (Photo: courtesy)<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By William Madouk Garang<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thousands of residents in Unity State\u2019s capital Bentiu town on Thursday strolled at Naam River in all directions for manual dredging exercise, as they clear waterweeds and mud that slows water flow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the frustrated residents of Bentiu who are affected by flood, they took upon themselves to manually clear the river as their children die from devastating floods and they can\u2019t wait any longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several of them were seen using simple tools like hoes, spades and bare hands to clear the river-beds, despite the previous directive issued by President Salva Kiir Mayardit suspending the planned dredging activities at Naam river until a creditable environmental assessment is done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Portsix Bakuony, the press Secretary in the office of Governor of Unity State confirmed that, indeed some resident went for river clearing on Thursday morning thinking that it will mitigate floods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we know is that there are people who went this morning for River clearing most of them are women,\u201d Bakuony told No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper via a phone interview yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAccording to little information we have gathered they think that by clearing the river it will decrease the floods, the initial problem is floods they think maybe by making this the floods will decrease,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bakuony presumed that maybe the local residents were infuriated because of the recent suspension of dredging activities by president, until proper environmental study is conducted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen they heard that this thing [dredging project] is suspended by President Maybe they are angered of that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The governor\u2019s press secretary however stated that, the State government is trying to advise the local population and give them reasons why dredging is temporarily halted adding that manual river clearing might be harmful because nobody knows what\u2019s under the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are also very worried of their lives because river has a lot of things inside the water and these are vulnerable women,\u201d he voiced his fears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe should not dredge the river when we don\u2019t have the feasibility study weighing the advantage and disadvantages as per now the State government has suspended anything to do with dredging until experts okay it,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Bakuony revealed that the State government had already built some dykes around the towns as flood mitigation rainy season approaches, and as relocating affected families to highlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to United Nations 2021 report, more than 900,000 people were affected by historic floods that hit the Country, with Unity, Jonglei and Pibor Administrative Areas being the areas worse hit by the floods. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By William Madouk Garang Thousands of residents in Unity State\u2019s capital Bentiu town on Thursday strolled at Naam River in all directions for manual dredging exercise, as they clear waterweeds and mud that slows water flow. According to the frustrated residents of Bentiu who are affected by flood, they took[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7590","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7590"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7592,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7590\/revisions\/7592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}