James Buyinza And Florence Mutesi
23 January 2008
Kigali — The visiting Burundian legislators were yesterday lectured on the policy of decentralisation and its proper implementation in fostering good governance and equitable development.
A delegation of eleven Burundian parliamentarians and senators is in the country on a week-long study tour. They arrived in the country last Sunday. The Coordinator of the National Decentralisation Implementation Secretarial (NDIS) under the Ministry of Local Government, Nepo Rugemintwaza, told the Burundian MPs that the process was one of the policies that would solve Burundi's social and economic challenges if properly implemented.
"Decentralisation policy allows the equitable distribution of resources at all levels and gives an opportunity for the communities to participate in their own development programmes," Rugemintwaza said. Among the things that the Burundian MPs were tipped on include the performance contracts, the newly inaugurated cultural education systems (Itorero ry'igihugu) and Ubudehe as new strategies for making citizens participate in development programmes. Rugemintwaza explained that the performance contracts would help their government to make local administrators more competitive through outlining a number of programmes and projects they intend to do in a particular year.
He told the visiting lawmakers that Itorero is a platform based on people's culture to solve problems, promoting national unity and executing all government development programmes at all levels. Senator Antoine Ntwari, the leader of the visiting delegation, said that the knowledge they have acquired from the Rwandan experience on the decentralisation process would help them implement it in Burundi with no difficulty. "We believe that the information we have got from this country will help our lawmakers in designing the best procedures of implementing decentralisation policy," Ntwari said.
He added that Burundi has spent years struggling to build a democratic government and the process of decentralisation was timely.
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