Juba City Council is appealing to the public to pay taxes in order for it to provide services to the town.

A spokesperson of the City Council said some traders and individual are resisting tax payment.

Martin Simon Wani also said some government institutions don’t want to pay for services such as garbage collection.

“We’ve got some counties and some payams which are not operational because people are resisting payment of taxes,” said Mr Wani.

“They say ‘this is a government institution; you go and get the money from the government’, not knowing that local government is the level of the government which operates naturally, and it is designed to operate with the taxes, the resources they collect from the people and then they return to the people in form of services.”

He said this affects the city council from doing its work of improving services in Juba city.

“We want our people to cooperate with us, to support our staff, especially the field officials so that Juba City Council can fulfil its official mandate to the people of Juba.”

Mr. Wani said that they are also facing challenges in keeping Juba clean.

He said people do not want to dispose of their waste in the right places.

“Some of us are reckless; you can see someone driving a car and from the car, you see a bottle coming out. Not only a bottle but even some funny things – the food waste,” he added.

“We want to appeal to our people because cleaning is a collective responsibility and let’s actually behave responsibly.”

Martin Simon Wani said the Juba City Council is planning to devise other ways of collecting taxes in the city.