Focus Media (Kigali)
Shyaka Kanuma
4 November 2009
Civil servants who handed Gasabo District over Frw 330 million francs of their own money on the promise that the district would give them plots of land to build houses on are preparing to file a lawsuit against Gasabo because they have not received a single plot.
"The choices we are left with are to wait and see if the President whom we have petitioned about our grievances intervenes to help us, but if that does not happen we will sue Gasabo," Alain Bernard Mukurarinda, head of an association of the civil servants who gave Gasabo their money said.
Gasabo District Mayor Claudene Nyinawagaga on 8 June this year wrote a letter - a copy of which we publish - to Mukurarinda promising that in October this year they would get their plots. Nyinawagaga copied the letter to the President and the Prime Minister among others.
"But October has come and gone and we did not get our plots," Mukurarinda, a prosecutor with the Prosecutor General's Office told The Rwanda Focus.
The plots wrangle has entered its second year and it has, according to sources familiar with the issue, become more confrontational with Nyinawagaga getting into shouting matches with Mukurarinda.
Just before a press conference she called this year at her office saying she wanted to shed light on the issue, she angrily confronted Mukurarinda (who was there as head of their association) telling him he should not have talked to the press about "issues that should have remained private." Reports in the media had been detailing the plight of the civil servants.
The Rwanda Focus has a copy of a letter the Gasabo Mayor wrote in December 2007 informing the civil servants that plots were available in Gasabo and anyone of them with either Frw 2,500,000 would pay it to the district and get a "plot of high standing" (that is of 12 acres), or Frw 1,500,000 for a "plot of medium standing."
In the letter Nyinawagaga said the money would pay for expropriation and for experts to draw up plot plans as well as road demarcations.
The civil servants - over 200 of them from institutions such as Minafet, Prosecutor General's Office, the Senate, REMA, the Auditor General's Office, RRA, RALGA, Minecofin and others - rushed to get bank loans and handed the money to Gasabo as quickly as they could.
Gasabo District carried out expropriation work in the areas they had been promised, namely Rusororo and Runyonza. There are claims by some that only a few of the baturage expropriated were paid. The district kicked out most of them telling them they had to vacate their property to make way for a new city plan and that they would be paid later.
Also no topographer drew any road demarcations and neither did anyone carry out plot measurements.
According to a letter of complaint by the association of civil servants to Gasabo, the district used their money for its own gains (inyungu z'ako). In the meantime the civil servants have been repaying their loans.
"Banks do not listen to stories that Gasabo District has not given us our plots; they simply deduct from our salaries as soon as the salaries come in," one aggrieved civil servant who did not want us to disclose his name for fear it would further jeopardize his chances of ever getting his money back told this newspaper.
Now some of the civil servants have almost fully repaid their loans but not a single one has gotten a plot.
"Master plan" problems
The civil servants began to smell a rat when months came and went and still they did not get their plots. Then on 25 November last year in a meeting held in the Ministry of Local Government Paul Jabo a vice mayor of Gasabo District informed representatives of the civil servants that they would not get plots at all.
Jabo's explanation was that they had to wait for the unveiling of the new city master plan. Jabo did not communicate this in writing. It was a verbal communication and that was all. He said if they were given plots to put up houses and then it turned out that in the master plan something else...a hospital, a playground, a green space, etc was allocated there they would incur losses, so it was better to wait.
The civil servants were very angry. "Why did these people advertise the plots yet they knew a master plan was on the way?" one asked.
"Why don't they just give us our money back and spare us their lies?" asked another.
After the meeting the civil servants formed a commission to ask for compensation. The commission came up with the demand that Gasabo district repay them as follows:
On the original sum each gave to the District it has to repay them with an 18 percent interest as per bank charges.
The District has to repay them the principle with a 22.9 percent interest adjusted for inflation for the year 2008.
The District also has to repay the money with a 5 percent interest as a fine for taking their money and using it for its own gains.
The civil servants each also demand that Gasabo pay them a 10 percent fine for the pains of promising them plots of land and then turning around and telling them they wouldn't get any after all.
According to the calculations of the commission, those who gave away Frw 2,500,000 million now have to be repaid 3,897,500 each and those who handed over 1,500,000 have each to be given 2,338,500.
A letter to the President
According to Mukurarinda, Nyinawagaga neither acknowledged the demands of the civil servants nor made a move to indicate the District was working on the problem. "No one in Gasabo communicated to us at all and months came and went and nothing happened," said Mukurarinda.
"We kept on reminding the District's administration of our grievances in writing but we did not get a single response," he added.
The civil servants then decided to write their letter to President Kagame dated 02 June 09. In it Mukurarinda details all the problems of the civil servants and asks for the President's intervention for them to get back their money.
Mayor Nyinawagaga's letter to Mukurarinda which we mention earlier in the story and which we publish "it is obvious was written in panic," a source from the Gasabo District administration informed us.
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