The residents of Lafon County in Eastern Equatoria State are leaving the area due to an absolute lack of food and health crisis.

Lafon County’s Member of Parliament Victor Omuho told journalists on Wednesday that his constituency was facing hunger crisis, dire health conditions and lack of access to information related to the COVID-19 pandemic in the area.

Omuho said he came to know about the issues in his area when he had gone to visit his Constituency from the 12^th up to 14^th where he managed to visit three payams just to discover that people were already vacating the place for greener pastures.

“There is an influx of people going from one Payam to the other looking for food. There is even a big number of other people going to neighboring countries, Kenya and Uganda because of lack of food,” he said.

He added, “The situation is not yet so acute because they are at the moment looking for wild fruits such as the wild yams in the forest that is sustaining them at the moment. But some of them are now crossing to nearby countries to bring food,” he said.

He added that other people decide to travel to Torit town in order to buy food unfortunately even there, the food is not as much as it is in Juba.

Last year on February 19, 2020, desert locusts invaded South Sudan in Eastern Equatoria State and destroyed crops.

According to Omuho, current hunger situation was caused by heavy presences of the locust in April 2020.

“The locusts came and destroyed the crops, but the farmers managed to chase them away,” Omuho said. “But that was after the locust had destroyed their farms, these people went back and re-planned the seeds.”

He added that before even the plants would grow, there was another attack from the Ugandan cobs.

“We had big influx of Ugandan cobs coming from the national park of Boma, this also wiped all the gardens these people and the little crops that were destroyed,” he explained.

Omuho said that when people started planning the crops and they were growing up well unfortunately again in June 2020 the floods came and destroyed the crops

“So the whole constituency number three in Eastern Equatoria State and other places including the whole of Lafon county is without food, they never harvested even the groundnuts that the people of Lafon use to harvest in big quantity this time around they failed to get it,” he said.

He appealed to the humanitarian agencies dealing with delivery of agriculture tools, food and seeds to help and provide deliveries before rainy season.

On a telephone interview with City Review, the Acting Director, confirmed that people in Lafon county communities were leaving the area due to hunger.

“There is a very big issue of hunger here in Lafon and that started around May up to now and this has pushed people away to Uganda and Kenya,” he said.

Martin also said that some people who couldn’t move away are just gearing wild fruits and other edibles from the forest.

“Some people have chicken and goats so they are surviving from them otherwise majority of the people are now eating wild fruits such as termari,” he said.

On December 27, 2020, the United Nations agencies warned that at 7.5 million people around the country could face severe hunger in 2021.

The National Bureau of Statistics and Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Technical Working Group in South Sudan released a classified report at the time detailing the food insecurity situation in the country with Jonglei State being the hardest-hit.

South Sudan went through four years of civil war that has led to a massive displacement and economic crisis leading to severe food insecurity, high prevalence of infectious diseases and limited access to health care. hence the country is now experiencing a deteriorating nutrition situation

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Food Programme (WFP) are calling on all political parties to exert more effort toward peace implementation to allow humanitarian access to food-insecure communities.

“We call on all parties to stop the violence and to ensure safe humanitarian access in order to prevent an already dire situation from turning into a full-blown catastrophe,” said FAO Representative Meshack Malo at the time.

The World Food Programme (WFP) also waved concerns over the increasing number of people suffering due to food and nutrition insufficiency, unprecedented flooding and high prices of commodities in the market.