Musanze might be the country’s food basket, but that has not stopped cases of malnutrition being prevalent in the district.

The Minister for Local Government, Francis Kaboneka, thinks the situation is too much of an irony to be ignored.Addressing a meeting that brought together various leaders from the district, Kaboneka said there were also cases of poor hygiene in Musanze, which exposes people to diseases.

"It is disappointing that a district with such opportunities is held back by poor performance of some of the leaders. I am not happy. Why doesn’t poor performance end? There is a problem somewhere. The poor performance is escalated by lack of teamwork spirit. People seem to work in isolation instead of complementing one another,” the minister said.

Musanze District, which is home to a host of tourist attractions such as Virunga National Park that is home to the rare mountain gorillas, ranked number 13 in last financial year’s performance contracts (Imihigo).

Kaboneka challenged the leaders to better coordinate and leverage the resources at their disposal to change the livelihood of the populace.

He further said that those that have perennially performed poorly must be identified and held accountable.

"We need employees who are up to the challenge. Those holding us back must be weeded out instead of recycling them around different sectors of the district,” the minister said.

During the meeting, local leaders owned up that they have not been good servants of the people as reflected on the welfare of the population, and pledged to strengthen teamwork to produce better results.

Edouard Twagirimana, the executive secretary of Busogo Sector, attributed the poor performance to poor time management and bureaucracy.

"We have bad results in Imihigo because we are not time-conscious and hardly carry out enough field trips to identify the problems people face. We need a lot of self-refection to improve the welfare of the people we serve,” he said.

The local leaders pledged that, since the real cause of poor performance had been identified, they were going to work hard to produce better results.

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