Yei, 13 August, 2020 / 8:00 pm (ACI Africa).
The Secretary General of the South Sudan’s Yei Diocese has backed calls by international agencies to re-opening learning institutions in the country, saying that keeping pupils at home during the COVID-19 lockdown only exposes them to danger.
Speaking to Emmanuel Radio of the Catholic Radio Network (CRN) in South Sudan Wednesday, August 12, Fr. Emmanuel Lodongo Sebit referenced the August 1 killing of three children in Juba and other reported killings of children in the East-Central African country and said that were the children in school, they would not have met with the cruelty.
“I strongly support the UN agencies, especially UNICEF and UNESCO in regard to the children and the reopening of schools,” Fr. Emmanuel said and added, “If schools were opened and in case the children were at school, the three children slain in Juba recently would have not died; they would have been found at school.”
Early this month, two United Nations agencies advised the South Sudanese government to consider reopening schools , a call that the Director for education in the metropolitan Archdiocese objected and proposed that stakeholders hold sober consultations on how to go about safely reopening schools amid the pandemic.
In an interview with ACI Africa Monday, August 3, the head of education in the Archdiocese of Juba, Fr. Gabriel Asida proposed, “Before responding to the appeal on the reopening of schools, there is a need for us (education partners) to sit down as counterparts of the ministry of education.”
