By Taban Gabriel
The Vice President for Infrastructure Cluster, Taban Deng Gai, has urged governors from the 10 states and three administrative areas to prioritize clearing illegal roadblocks in their respective areas to improve revenue collections
VP Taban argued that collecting money from highways infringes on the public rights for road usage and affects proceeds generation
“Highways are public roads. The meaning of public is that they are constructed by public money. They belong to everyone. They don’t belong to one state,” VP Taban said
The VP calls on the state officials and the three administrators to collect taxes from markets and not on the highways or public roads
“I said yesterday any governor or any government of the State is entitled to collect revenue in the state’s markets. You can impose any taxes in your market, but not on highways,” Taban added.
Taban, in his key remark at the ongoing 8th Governor’s forum, further implores the need to upgrade roads linking Juba and other key areas to improve the movement of goods and services
He said the government is exploring ways to elevate the standard of “most” roads in the country
“So now, I want us also to select a few roads. and one thing, also we may be lucky because there is a project that was supposed to go to the Council of Ministers tomorrow or even the last Friday, but we failed to meet in the Council of Ministers because of the governance forum. This project, which is supposed to go to the Council of Ministers, is about the road of Juba, Yei, Kaya, and Kapoeta,” he said
On the other hand, The Vice president beseeched the government to address “rampant” issues of Land grabbing and cattle movement in Central Equatoria State while imploring the 8th Governor’s Forum to focus on a few resolutions that “we must implement before the next forum”.