As Rwanda prepares to revise its classification of poverty levels, a debate has come up over whether perception should determine who deserves welfare support from the government. 

Income, especially on a regular basis, for work or through return on investments should be the factor in designing new ubudehe categories, experts say.

The government uses Ubudehe classification when determining who merits welfare services.

The revised classifications are scheduled to come into effect July 2015.

However, there are concerns that the new Ubudehe classification might not be fair if it is based on people’s perceptions like it is with the current classification.

Rulindo mayor Justus Kangwage argues that there some people who continue to receive services meant for the poor but are hard to catch because of the current classifications.

Kangwage, who is also the chairperson of the Rwanda Association of Local Government Authorities, told The New Times that getting some beneficiaries off services such as paying their health insurance and other survival cash through social protection programmes has become impossible because there is no empirical evidence to prove that they have the money to support themselves.

"There should be no ambiguity. There should be a clear line that distinguishes people. A house worth Rwf30 million here (in Rulindo) could be rented at Rwf20,000 per month, while in Kigali you could even make a million in rent per month,” Kangwage said, essentially highlighting the need for Ubudehe categories to be based on income figures.

The chairperson of Transparency International Rwanda, Marie Immaculée Ingabire, agrees, describing a classification based on perceptions as unfair when determining who merits specific support from the government.

"Income-based classification would be the best. Not everyone with a house has an easy life,” she said in an interview yesterday.

Concerns over govt stance

Concerns that using Ubudehe classification to deliver public services might not be fair have become increasingly vivid, especially since government started using the classification as one of the factors for eligibility on access to bursary for university studies, subsidy for paying community health insurance (Mutuelle de Santé), as well as many other social protection plans to help the poor such as Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme (VUP).

Late last year, the Ministry of Education reinstated over 10,000 students who had been scrapped off the beneficiaries’ list for university bursary scheme based on the current Ubudehe classification.

The 10,000 students reinstated on the full scholarship represented at least 80 per cent of the 13,000 students who had appealed against a decision to remove them from the scheme, which had gone into force at the beginning of September 2013, as a result of the government’s cost-sharing policy for tertiary education.

In 2001, Rwandans were placed in six categories depending on the economic status of each individual household but figures about  income levels is not what was looked at.

Instead, owning or not owning property and other assets like livestock, the quality of one’s diet, or whether people were self-employed or working for others were considered in drawing six poverty categories.

Those who were homeless or extremely poor in the villages based on residents’ perceptions were called names like Abatindi to mean have-nots even if in the local language that may also mean someone who is mean or cruel.

"You don’t call people Abatindi because they are vulnerable widows or mothers who lost their children because they are poor. That doesn’t match with real life values,” Ingabire said, describing how outdated the current classification is.

‘Objective classification’

Former Minister for Local Government Protais Musoni, under whose tenure the classification was drawn, agrees that the current sorting is outdated.

He said the current classification was put in place in the spirit of sensitising people to hate and fight poverty while they worked together to eradicate it in their communities.

That’s why names such as Abatindi were used, Musoni says, and not income levels for people’s classification.

Should government need to use Ubudehe for the purpose of delivering services, then a new design should be objective, Musoni said.

"What you want to achieve always determines the design parameters. It is very important to look at the objective (for the new Ubudehe categories),” he said.

New proposed classification may not be income-based if approved as it is.

Revised criteria for Ubudehe categories seen by The New Times as proposed by Local Administrative Entities Development Agency (LODA) and handed to the Ministry of Local Government has removed names on categorization but kept perception as criteria instead of income levels.

The Director-General of LODA, Laetitia Nkunda, said that the classification based on people’s perceptions in the villages is not a waste of time.

"Ubudehe is a planning tool but it shouldn’t be the only criterion for delivering public services. It (Ubudehe) is a kind of preliminary data which can be based on to do a deeper analysis,” Nkunda said.

She also said the classification based on perceptions is not a waste of time because there is an appeal process in case anyone believes they have been classified in the wrong category.

2001 Ubudehe Classification

The programme places citizens in six categories depending on the economic status of each individual household, these are:

l Those in abject poverty locally referred to as ‘abatindi nyakuja’ (category 1), own no property, live on begging and help from others, and consider it lucky if they died.

l The second category, is the very poor and these have no house, live on poor diet which they can afford with difficulty, work every day for others for their survival, have tattered clothes, own no portion of land, and do not own cattle.

l The third category is called the poor. These depend on food deficit in nutrients, own a small portion of land, have low production and their children cannot afford secondary education.

l The fourth category comprises the resourceful poor who own some land, cattle, a bicycle, have average production, their children can afford secondary education, and have less difficulties in accessing health care.

l In the fifth category lie the food rich people who basically own big lands, eat balanced food diets and live decent houses. They employ others, own cattle, and their children easily afford university education.

l The sixth category is the money rich, who comprise of people with money in banks, receive bank loans, own a beautiful house, a car, cattle, fertile lands, sufficient food and are permanent employers.