Vice President Dr. James Wani Igga speaks at a dinner with visiting UN officials. (Photo: MoFA&IC/Facebook)

Vice President Dr James Wani Igga has criticized the Ministry of Environment for opposing the ongoing clearance of the Naam River in Unity State despite it being a government decision.

Dr James Wani Igga was reacting to remarks made by Africano Batel, the Undersecretary Environment Ministry that the Ministry was not consulted.

“Maybe Africano was absent or the Minister of Africano should have gone to the Minister of Water. This is how people do things harmoniously comrades.

“If it’s true that your ministry was not consulted by the Ministry of Water, then that was unfortunate and wrong. But one thing,  I know all resolutions of the cabinet before they go to the cabinet, they first come to the cluster.”

“The late Minister Manawa went to the Governance Cluster with more Ministers. But because he belonged to my cluster, he came to the cluster and we digested this with a lot of papers and with lots of data – some of which I did not see here. It was simply scientific. Maybe he did not have time to tell people that I  used scientists.”

In June last year, the Minister of Environment and Forestry said the Nile River ‘dredging’ project was illegal and would not commence until a proper environmental assessment was conducted.

Josephine Napwon told a press briefing that the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation was not aware of the project and was yet to be notified of the initiative.

Her remark was a week after Unity State announced it received machinery for the dredging project along the Naam River.

Minister Napwon said her institution had developed flood mitigation and adaptation strategies that did not include either dredging of rivers or resumption of the Jonglei Canal.

She added that the Environment Ministry was waiting to assign a team of environmental experts to conduct scoping and screening of the project.

However, during his speech marking the 11^th anniversary of the declaration of independence of South Sudan, President Salva Kiir suspended the planned dredging and asked for feasibility studies to be led by the Ministry of Environment.

But later in the year, the cabinet approved the project and said clearance would start immediately to reduce the flooding.

“We were satisfied at the level of the cluster and we took this to the level of the cabinet and the cabinets were satisfied,” said VP Igga.

“So any minister trying to jump out from a resolution of a Council of Ministers in wrong because according to our regulations as ministers, even if you are against it in the hall by the time you come out, you must stand and defend that resolution,” he added.