Industry and Trade Minister Saad Al-Din bin Talib delivered a lecture to the NDC’s Southern Issue Working Group on Wednesday. Among the topics covered in the lecture were political, financial and administrative corruption and social and rights issues.

Talib focused on how corruption grew widespread in the past and urged NDC members to study all forms of corruption with the aim of helping to find suitable mechanisms with which to make headway against its use.

Following the lecture, the working group members listened as the Justice and Development Party presented its conception of the Southern Issue’s core components.

According to the party’s representative, reducing southern parliamentary representation from 40 percent during the transitional period to 20 percent following elections in 1993, reducing southern representation in the government from 50 percent to 35 percent, and other political complications following the 1994 civil war amounted to the issue’s core components.

The repercussions of the civil war - including wrongful terminations of many southern military and civil employees - made up the issue’s economic component, according to the representative.

The Justice and Development Party representative said the southern issue also had social and cultural aspects.