Vice President Hussein Abdelbagi, head of the National Coronavirus Taskforce and vice president for Service Cluster | Credit | Eye Radio

The South Sudan Doctors’ Union is demanding the National Taskforce on coronavirus to explain to the citizens how it spent the pandemic funds.

The union also demands the national and international NGOs to present how they have used the COVID19 response funds donated by donor countries.

In April last year, the high-level task force on coronavirus received a 100,000-dollar check from IGAD as financial support against COVID-19.

In the same month, the World Bank allocated 7.6 million dollars to help contain the spread of coronavirus in the country.

Among other COVID-19 Response Fund is the European Union 4 million euros and the USAID 4.5 million dollars.

The Chinese Embassy in Juba also donated $100,000 to the World Health Organization to fight coronavirus in the country.

In April, the UK government released 3.5 million euros towards specific humanitarian and health efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus and save lives

In April 2020, the Minister of Information Michael Makuei said the council of ministers had approved 8 million dollars to fun the coronavirus preparedness plan.

Despite all this, two weeks ago, coronavirus frontline workers threaten to stage a nation-wide pay strike, saying they have not been paid for nine months now.

Speaking to Eye Radio on Monday, Dr. Anthony Garang – the chairperson of the Doctors’ Union, stressed that the public would like to know the expenditure Of the Covid19 Response Fund.

“As the doctors union, we call for auditing of these funds so that we know where this money has been spent and what is needed because the pandemic is not yet over, and we are seeing our neighbors are responding to the third wave,” he said.

“We can’t just say it is over, it is the right of the public to know whether the money has been appropriately spent and what is needed to effectively respond to any upsurge.”

Dr. Garang added that there has been no transparency on the utilization of the money donated by foreign missions and well-wishers.

“The donor money are usually reported by the media but we don’t see them so that we know what has been done with that money?,” said Garang.

“It is up to them to come and tell us that we have done this with the money, we are left with this or we ran out of money.”

“They should tell the public because the money belong to the people of South Sudan. It was awarded in the name of the people of South Sudan.”

The Doctors Union are also demanding the Taskforce to make public what happened to the account it opened for well-wishers to directly wire their donations.