Nucleus Cities For Southern Sudan States

Plans are afoot to build nucleus cities outside the South Sudanese state capitals.

“The plan seeks to avail affordable housing to poor citizens across South Sudan. A house in Juba and other state capitals is very expensive’, he said.

At the same time the Ministry announced that it will make the South Sudanese capital a “classless” city.

Dr Wani said it is not very healthy for the Ministry to start classifying the society that revolves from the grassroots system.

“In the next town plan we will get the, land build it and any potential occupants will get the houses at affordable rates. The system that we had in the past where houses are classified is not going to happen again in the new town planning for South Sudan”, he said.

He added that the Ministry’s objective is to make the life of every citizen easy by creating the space to accommodate them, adding that the policy would apply to all the ten states.

“A Housing master plan for the whole region is going to be drawn after which the design of each state capital will be created differently”, said Dr Wani.

He also announced that all the nucleus cities in the state capitals will have new names to identify them.

“The new city in Juba will be called ‘Rhino city’, in Wau we will have ‘Zaraafe city’, and in Western Equatoria State there will be ‘Pineapple City’. This would enable people to identify with the states quicker”, he said.

“We believe that by November this year we shall have finished with the master plan and present it to the Council of Ministers for approval after which we shall start with the design and documentation of the houses. The implementation will start by April next year”, said Dr Wani.

The Undersecretary said the Ministry has hired one of the best town planners in the world to plan South Sudanese cities.

At the press briefing the GoSS Minister of Housing and Physical Planning Jemma Nunu Kumba said the cost of building South Sudanese cities stands at 10.1 billion US Dollars.

Kumba said her Ministry is working on a 20 years master plan for the semi-autonomous region.

“We do not currently have the full amount but we will start off with what we have in the budget”, she said.

“Right now some Ministries don’t have enough office space and accommodation. We have our plan in place to set up our cities and to re-organise and to re-plan Juba. Because Juba is mostly made up of slums and it’s our responsibility to design it”, she said.