Rwandans who worked for the Burundian government before they returned home in 1994 have petitioned President Paul Kagame to help them get their full pension benefits.

The pensioners are challenging a recent Rwanda government decision to give them back pension contributions they made in Burundi instead of paying them pension benefits as they had hoped over the years.

After nearly twenty years of negotiations between the Government of Rwanda and the Government of Burundi as Rwandan officials tried to help the pensioners get the benefits in Rwanda, the outcome seems unpopular with the retirees.

The Government of Rwanda has offered to give the pensioners the total amount of money they contributed in Burundi over the years instead of giving them pension.

For example, according to a payment modality approved by the government last month 64-year-old Pierre Claver Kayigi will receive Rwf106,000 which he contributed in Burundi for 17 years while working as a secondary school teacher.

Instead of getting back the contribution, he was hoping to get monthly pension benefits for the rest of his life as the Burundi government had promised as he remitted his social security premiums.

Kayigi and the other retirees (about 1,800 of them), have now petitioned President Kagame asking him to overturn the payment plan and instead try and get the pensioners their pension benefits.

"We are praying so that he (the President) can do something. We told him that a decision was made based on very little information about the issue. We told him that mistakes were made in the negotiations between Rwanda and Burundi and it led to injustice,” said Kayigi, who is also a spokesperson for Rwandan pensioners who worked in Burundi.

Kayigi said their petition was sent to the President at the end of last month and that a response from the Presidency was expected soon.

The Minister for Finance and Economic Planning, Amb. Claver Gatete, told deputies on the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Affairs last month that Rwanda couldn’t afford to pay pension benefits to the retirees because the Burundian government didn’t send real pension for them.

Instead of sending pension benefits that would include interests accrued on the money contributed by the Rwandan pensioners over the years, Gatete said, the Burundian government sent the Rwandan Government only the contributions paid by pensioners.

The contributions of about 1800 pensioners, amounting to Rwf 139 million, were sent to Rwanda in October 2013 by the Government of Burundi.

"Most of us have refused to take back the contributions. It’s useless,” Kayigi told The New Times on Monday, adding that Rwandan officials shouldn’t have accepted to receive the package if they knew it wouldn’t cover the pension benefits.

Efforts to contact Venantie Tugireyezu, the Minister in the President’s Office, for a comment were futile by press time.

The Director-General of Rwanda Social Security Board (RSSB), Jonathan Gatera, told legislators last month that it would cost government about Rwf16 billion to avail pension benefits to all the 1,800 Rwandans who worked in the public service in Burundi.

But Gatete said that the Government of Rwanda does not have the money to avail pension benefits to the retirees because the Burundian government refused to send their contributions with the interest the money accumulated over the years.

The issue of pension for the group has also been reported to Parliament by the retirees and is being examined by legislators on the Standing Committee on Social Affairs of the Lower Chamber of the House.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw