By Geng Makec Thonlei.
News reaching our desk have keenly established that the highly overrated, corrupt and rebellious minister of petroleum seeks to extend SPLM-IO’s dominance over South Sudan’s oil and gas industry even further. This comes after long-standing years of politicized oil production policies, corruption in procurement practices, sabotage, and distortions of oil and gas policies within Ministry of Petroleum ever since Mr. Puot Kang was appointed in February 2020. Ultimately, these combined to cripple oil production to its current stasis or erosion.
“Since then, the oil & gas sector, critical to South Sudan’s economic recovery post-conflict was extremely jeopardized and degenerated into a total chaos” -sources privy to the matter suggest. “Instead of the oil and gas sector becoming the key cornerstone in revitalizing rapid, inclusive economic recovery, they continued, a reverse which is -oil being a potential trigger of renewed civil war in South Sudan, has been fostered and encouraged by the current minister of petroleum, Mr. Puot Kang”.
To add salt to injury, concerned sources within the power centers stressed, Mr. Puot Kang has not stopped at messing the Ministry of Petroleum only. Through Puot Kang’s resolve in furthering SPLM-IO’s dominance over the oil and gas sector, a close confidante of the superbly rich Petroleum minister has revealed that he (Puot) has secured numerous positions in JOCs for his close relatives, former rebels, and active members of SPLM-IO in the upcoming reshuffling by the Nilepet MD.
Mr. Puot Kang’s confidante elaborated further that earlier last week after euphoric celebrations at Gabat in what was dubbed “Celebration of 100 days of Nilepet Transformation under Nilepet MD -Hon Bernard Amour Makeny”, a deal was struck between Minister Puot Kang & MD Bernard Amour to allocate several lucrative top managerial positions for Puot Kang & his rebellious outfit, SPLM-IO, across the three main JOCs (GPOC, SPOC). This include but not limited to Vice Presidency of SPOC, Procurement for GPOC, General Service for SPOC, and several other positions.
Admittedly, Puot Kang’s confidante emphasized further saying that active SPLM-IO members have already been enlisted in the approved list of Nilepet deployment to the JOCS due to be released by Monday May 29th 2023. By this, he sternly acknowledges, the Nilepet Co.LTD and JOCs in entirety will have come under heavy infiltrations, secretly maximizing SPLM-IO’s extensive influence over Nilepet & JOCs.
With due considerations to Dar Petroleum, Mr.Puot Kang’s close confidante revealed that Minister Puot Kang and his close circles aim to exploit Nilepet MD even more. He confided that the Nilepet MD was mis-advised to make deployments to DPOC after changes to SPOC & GPOC have been finalized. And that the reason behind such scammed advice is that Minister Puot Kang and his SPLM-IO circles have secretly plotted to sabotage DPOC secondments thereafter in order to intimidate Nilepet MD Bernard Amour Makeny to also accept sharing of top managerial positions in DPOC with SPLM-IO nominees. He furthered that once SPOC & GPOC deployments are completed by Monday, separately, minus DPOC secondments being simultaneously deployed, the SPLM-IO’s planned capture of Nilepet Corporation & JOCs will have been a complete success.
Whereas Nilepet Corporation has seen series of much-hyped transformation slogans in most recent months, the transformation project under MD Bernard Amour Makeny looks set to be fueling war-profiteering logic post-conflict, corruption and associated dominance over oil and gas sector for the SPLM-IO respectively.
In nutshells, as Bernard Amour strives to fundamentally transform the tattered corporation from years-long mismanagement & lack of transparency in its operations, he should be extremely wary of ongoing capture of JOCs & Nilepet by Mr. Puot Kang & his corrupt SPLM-IO syndicates -analysts caution!
As a matter of fact, checking against such potential capture of JOCs by the SPLM-IO will mean not falling for delays in JOCs deployments through Mr.Puot Kang’s calculated moves to constantly sabotage these changes to happen in order to create leverages for him to smuggle through overly inexperienced, technically semi-illiterate, and resource-thirsty, active SPLM-IO members to key technical and managerial positions in the JOCs.
Notably, as the MD plans to introduce changes in the JOCs by Monday 29th 2023 or sooner than later, Hon. Bernard Amour Makeny should ensure simultaneous deployments to SPOC, GPOC, and DPOC as well. This will stop any further compromises in the DPOC deployment process as clearly illustrated by the cases of SPOC & GPOC secondment lists which have been heavily compromised by Mr. Puot Kang by capturing key technical positions for the SPLM-IO and his immediate relatives. Short of that, President Salva Kiir will only continue to lose confidence in working with Mr. Puot Kang and Bernard Amour Makeny as close sources privy to J1 have been suggestive of president’s emerging distrust and disinterest in the two oil officials.
