President Salva Kiir has sacked the country’s finance minister without giving a reason, although the move comes amid worsening inflation and a sharp depreciation of the local currency against the US dollar.
The dismissal of the national minister, Awow Daniel Chuang, was announced in a decrees read on state TV SSBC on Wednesday night. As the country’s economic crisis deepened, civil servants and the army have also gone for several months without being paid salaries.
Citizens have consistently decried skyrocketing prices of basic commodities like food due to the deteriorating economic situation.
Awow, an ally of Kiir, was appointed finance minister in March this year and had undertaken various tasks, including trying to pay the civil servants and lobbying for loans.
Kiir appointed Marial Deng Ring to replace Eng. Awow Daniel.
President Kiir also removed Bernard Amuor Makeny from his position as Managing Director of the state-owned Nile Petroleum Corporation (Nilepet) and replaced him with Eng. Mohammed Lino Benjamin.
Benjamin was serving as the technical advisor to the Ministry of Petroleum until he was relieved.
In another decree, President Kiir fired two undersecretaries of the Ministries of Health and Petroleum: Dr Ader Machar Achiek, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health, and Dr William Anyak Deng, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Petroleum.
He then appointed Dr Harriet Pasquala as the new Undersecretary in the Ministry of Health and Dr Chol Deng Thon Abel, a former managing director of Nilepet, as the new Undersecretary in the Ministry of Petroleum.
