Rwandans who were expelled from Tanzania and settled in Bugesera District yesterday received assorted food items worth Rwf27 million.

The food was donated by Direct Aid Project Rwanda, formerly known as African Muslims Agency, in collaboration with the district’s Joint Action Development Forum (JADF).

Al Hadji Saleh, the Direct Aid centre director in Bugesera, said the donation was part of the many activities planned to help the group cope with their eviction.

"We have been holding meetings with members of the joint action development forum to see what we can do together to help these people to integrate and this is one of many outcomes from those meetings,” said Saleh, promising more aid.

Donald Ndahiro, the vice president of JADF Bugesera, said the forum hopes to harness efforts of the newly settled residents to develop the district.

"These expelled Rwandans are able to work as hard as they can. The challenge is getting them what to do. As JADF, we are tasked to help them integrate in the community so that they can join us in the development process,” he said.

"This is the reason why we committed to buy a cow for each of these families. The cows will be distributed within the next three months as we have already collected around Rwf1.6 million toward the project.”

Seraphine Mukantabana, the minister for disaster preparedness and refugees affairs, called on the residents to work hard to rebuild themselves.

"You used to work hard while in Tanzania, the reason why some of you had managed to own herds and had become rich. We need you to work harder and become wealthier than you used to be in Tanzania,” the minister said.

She reaffirmed government’s commitment to extending development projects to all citizens.

"We are drafting projects that aim at uplifting you and this will start by supporting youth to get vocational and technical training to create off-farm jobs, then after, girls and women will get the same support.”

Annet Muteteri, one of the beneficiaries, cited land shortage among their main challenges.

"We can easily pick up but still some of us do not have land. I hope once we get land we will be working hard as it is our benefits,” she said.

Currently, Bugesera has 253 families of Rwandans evicted from Tanzania.

The district says 218 of them have already got houses while JADF pledged that the remaining 35 families are to get theirs within the next few months.

Nationwide, 708 families of the 14,445 evicted people await houses within the first quarter of 2015.

Every family yesterday received 50kgs of rice, 15 kilogrammes of sugar, 40 kilogrammes of beans, 50 kilogrammes of maize flour, 20 litres of cooking oil and one box of bars of soap expected to take them for the next three months.

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