South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Awan Achiek
The Minister of General Education and Instruction, Awut Deng Acuil on Wednesday decried the lack of funding to the National Examination Council, adding that it has been operating for two years without budget.
“For two years in the row the Examination Council has been given a budget that they can’t even set the papers, just setting,” Awut said during the ordinary meeting of the Examination Council on Wednesday in Juba.
She said that they have been funding examination for the last two years from the Ministry’s budget.
“It is a nightmare to all of us and we don’t know where to turn, so normally what we do, we take the budget of the ministry because we don’t want to let the children of South Sudan down,” Awut said.
She said that the lack of funds for the Examination Council is affecting the ministry’s capacity to deliver exams in the country.
“I don’t know why a decision is made that Examination Council will not be given a budget, this is the second year now without the budget,” Awut said.
“The number is increasing, like this year we have over 68,000 students and it costing us not less than SSP 2 billion and above but what they have is SSP 900 million out of SSP 2 billion,” she added.
Awut appealed to the National legislative Assembly to consider availing funds in the next budget.
“I am appealing to members of parliament that if it happen again this year; we will not be able do examination because there are activities in the ministry that we suspended including infrastructure to pay for conduct of examination,” she said.
