Rajab Mohandis, executive director of the Organization for Responsive Governance | File Photo.

A civil society activist has criticized parties to the revitalized peace deal for agreeing on “huge governments in the states”.

On Monday, the former government, SPLM-IO, South Sudan Opposition Alliance and the Other Political Parties agreed on state power ratio.

According to the peace deal, the former government shall have 55 percent at the state and local government levels; SPLM-IO, 27; SSOA, 10; and OPP shall have 8 percent.

They agreed on a total of 170 ministers in the ten states, to be shared based on the percentages.

The parties also settled on 50 advisors, 60 chairpersons of commissions and 510 members of parliament in the ten states.

Reacting to the matter, Rajab Muhandis – the executive director of Organization for Responsive Governance – says despite it can be considered as a positive move, the state governments are going to cost a lot of money.

“The civil servants have been going without salaries for quite some time – their salaries have been very much irregular,” Muhandis stressed.

“We have seen this situation of so much increase in the number of state government structures. This huge government is completely unnecessary.”

The government has been struggling to pay civil servants, claiming there is no money despite the fact that it gets roughly $5m as daily oil proceeds.

“We will demand that at this time, since they have made this decision, we demand that this government should provide services to the people.”