Juba City Council has launched an operation on illegal water traders in the city saying the water tankers are supposed to be paying fees after six months.

“We are making this general operation for the water tankers and taxi drivers for public transportation and the big trucks that do carry building materials within the town. We are monitoring who is following working without respecting the rightful producers of the city council,” said Antholino Passeinte, the Senior Inspector of local government in Juba City Council as he spoke to the City Review on Thursday last week.

Passeinte said that the reason for carrying out the operations was to achieve the motto of Juba City Council- “Keep Juba Clean”.

He said that crackdown was to ensure that the traders live to the expectations by paying their fees as expected. Part of this money goes into keeping the city clean.

He said, “We normally give them every after six month to come and pay but they don’t do that, they are supposed to pay a fine for falling to pay the money in time but we now don’t.

“Some of these water tankers just get to the road and start selling water and the taxi drivers as well, without even following the rightful procedures of paying the government taxes.

“Yet they are supposed to come to the city council office and find out what they were supposed to do before they can out their activities.’’

The crackdown comes barely a week after a group of activists in Juba petitioned the city council to deal with illegally operated water bowsers that have been implicated in various accidents in South Sudan.