The peace monitoring body, R-JMEC has called on the unity government to expedite the process of redeployment of the necessary unified forces.
Dr Thomson Fontaine, R-JMEC’s deputy Chief of Staff-Strategy expressed concerns over the delay in the redeployment of the necessary unified forces in the country.
The peace monitor says the deployment of the forces is lagging far behind the timeline of the peace agreement.
It says those who graduated should have been deployed to improve the security situation in the country.
“We [R-JMEC] continue to push very hard for the redeployment, we have a promise from the government that this is being worked,” Thomson told Eye Radio’s Dawn show on Thursday.
“The President himself has indicated that he is very much keen on getting that done,” he added.
“We want to see the graduation happen like yesterday, I mean they should have been out there already,
“We were hoping that once the graduation process finished, which happened in January of this year, they would have been redeployed, we are now four months later,
“We need to see that out of those training centres, working in the interest of the South Sudanese, and that is what has to be done now, so yeah we are very concerned.”
Last month, the Council of Ministers approved over 3 billion South Sudanese pounds to facilitate the deployment of the first batch of the necessary unified forces.
The proposed equivalent of 3 million United States dollars was tabled before the cabinet meeting by the Minister of Peace Building Stephen Par Kuol.
In November 2022, the unity government passed out at least 49,500 members of the necessary unified forces across the country.
21,000 of them graduated from Central Equatoria State, 13,600 graduated from the Greater Bahr el Ghazal Region and another 9,300 from Upper Nile State.
Further, 1,500 peace forces were passed out in Eastern Equatoria State, in addition to 2,000 who graduated in Western Equatoria State in September 2022 and 1,701 in Bor.
Unspecified thousands of the forces also graduated in the Unity State capital Bentiu.
The 2018 revitalized peace deal expects the unity government to graduate 83,000 unified forces drawn from the various parties to take charge of security during the ongoing transitional period.