Southern returnees face unknown fate
17 June, 2012
KHARTOUM, June 7 (SUDANOW)—The South Sudanese, numbering 11,840, who were stranded in Kosti river port in the northern White Nile State for more than a year, were finally airlifted from Khartoum to Juba in an operation sponsored by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) that chartered 79 flights the last of which was flown on Wednesday, June 5..jpg)
Viewpoints of the passengers of the last flight were in concurrence that they do not know their fate with respect to work, accommodation, education for their children and health service, particularly as the health facilities are very poor.
Martin Sakoc Koc is the father of an eight-member family consisting of five sons, two daughters and a tall brunette wife of the Dinka tribe that constitutes an overwhelming majority in the South, and a retired Civil Defense sergeant, Martin took up private jobs for three years in the north.
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Asked by SUDANOW about the sort of job he is planning to take in the South, Martin said he did not know and, after a pause, added that he knows farming and may therefore work as a farmer. He did not know, either, where to take his children for education and how much he would pay in school fees in this country.
Hilda Joseph, 55, a Baria tribeswoman from Juba, South Sudan, says she would not know where to go, maybe to the countryside or to camps prepared by the Government. She says her three sons travelled to the South after the secession. “I will try to reunite my family,” Hilda said, adding that she left her youngest son behind in Khartoum to finish his medicine honors in Omdurman Hospital.
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Asked whether she is planning to return, Hilda said if she found the conditions inappropriate, she would go back to Khartoum but this would require a passport and migration procedures.
Makoj Garang, who graduated in the Faculty of Commerce, the University of Al-Nilein, Khartoum, packed up to join his family in Juba. He is not sure of the job he would take in the new country but he seems optimistic that he would find a job for a living and for building his future and for contributing to constructing his new homeland.
The acting Charge D’Affaires of the South Sudanese embassy in Khartoum, Martin Eissa, who served in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry before the secession, addressed the last batch of the returnees at Khartoum airport as saying: “You are being expelled from the Sudan, the country in which you grew up, but these are the international laws. You have to return and contribute to building your State in the South.”
He pointed out that there are 160,000 Southerners in accommodation centers in Khartoum State in addition 3,000 others waiting to be transported by train to neighboring Bahr el-Ghazal and Upper Nile states. Martin said his government has appropriated 50 million dollars for the voluntary return of the South Sudanese nationals.
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END
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