A weeklong tour of the country by legislators in the Lower House will see them compile a report about the current situation of citizens’ welfare and make recommendations to government on how to improve it, The New Times has learned.

The lawmakers started their tour on Monday to assess the implementation of the country’s policies to fight malnutrition, improve public hygiene, and fight poverty.

They will also assess how the distribution of fertilisers and manure to farmers is going, sensitise the local population to be actively involved in development programmes, visit major development programmes in districts such as infrastructure projects, and seek to understand challenges that citizens are faced with while implementing development programmes.

The legislators are grouped into two- or three-member teams that are dispatched in all the country’s 30 districts, with each team visiting different sectors in a district.

The legislators say that such outreach programmes help them understand issues that form the basis of their work for government oversight.

"We will compile a general report of our findings and make recommendations which will be tabled before Parliament in a plenary session. Often, such reports guide our work in the government control exercise whereby we summon the Cabinet to address specific issues,” said Agnès Mukazibera, who is leading a team of MPs that is touring Kicukiro District in Kigali.

As Mukazibera and two other legislators Emmanuel Mudidi and Nura Nikuze toured Kicukiro Health Centre in Niboye Sector on Tuesday, they urged nurses to express any challenges they face in improving people’s welfare so that they can be discussed in Parliament.

"If there is something you wish us to address you are free to let us know,” Mukazibera told the health centre’s nutritionists.

During their brief meeting with the lawmakers, the nutritionists at the health centre made it clear that poverty, especially among homeless single mothers, remains the main cause for malnutrition among children in the area.

Domitille Kankesha, a nutritionist, said they have nine children from Niboye and Kagarama sectors in Kicukiro being treated for malnutrition at the health centre.

"We teach the children’s parents about nutrition and we also sometimes feed the malnourished children,” she said.

But Kankesha also noted that some of the programmes to fight malnutrition such as encouraging kitchen gardening or rearing chicken for eggs don’t work for families that live in dire poverty such as those who rent small houses without gardens.

MP Innocent Kayitare, who visited Huye District in Southern Province on Monday, said the Girinka programme had issues last year such as reports that some vets were not visiting the cow beneficiaries to know the problems they were facing, while some cows could also be sold by the beneficiaries.

Fighting malnutrition

The fourth edition of Rwanda Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey ‘EICV’ 2013/14, published in September last year, indicated that prevalence of stunted children has declined over time, to about 38 per cent in 2014/15.

However, the survey also noted that malnutrition remained a significant challenge.

The findings prompted President Paul Kagame to make a rallying call against malnutrition, urging officials to urgently step up efforts against it.

The government’s efforts against malnutrition include donating cows to poor families through a programme known as One Cow Per Poor Family (Girinka), feeding primary school children, and sensitising families to grow vegetables in their backyards.

The Minister for Finance and Economic Planning, Claver Gatete, told the media last year that it would require more strategic measures to supplement the available efforts to eliminate the malnutrition.

"What we are going to do is to consult and see what kind of measures as government, institutions and local government can be taken to eradicate malnutrition,” he said.

Concerning chemical fertilisers, the legislator said their previous assessments found that farmers were complaining that fertiliser prices were higher than expected under government subsidy.

Last year, the Ministry of Agriculture signed contracts with eight private fertiliser companies, which were to import and distribute 45,000 metric tonnes of subsidised fertilisers to farmers in the year 2016.

The lawmakers will be looking at what impact the efforts have had on farmers in the country so far.

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Why the tour?

The ongoing tour by the legislators is part of routine outreach trips that they make twice every year.

The trips help the lawmakers to get a clearer image of the population’s welfare and how to improve programmes aimed at improving their lives.

Last year, the legislators toured all the country’s districts from January 24 to February 2, assessing hygiene, people living with livestock under the same roof, malnutrition cases and lack of veterinaries to assist beneficiaries of Girinka programme.

They also assessed how local officials were implementing social protection programmes such as Vision 2020 Umurenge, Girinka, and Ubudehe.

Additional reporting by Emmanuel Ntirenganya in Huye.

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