Local entities of the country’s administration should be further empowered to improve the delivery of public service to the citizens, senators have said.

The call was made as the senators were meeting with the Minister for Local Government, Francis Kaboneka, at Parliament yesterday.

Kaboneka addressed members of the senatorial Standing Committee on Social Affairs as they continue analysing governance issues raised in the 2015/16 reports from National Commission for Human Rights, Public Service Commission, as well as the Office of the Ombudsman.

Just like the Rwanda Governance Board’s citizen report scorecard assessment for 2016, reports by the two commissions and the Office of the Ombudsman filed citizens’ complaints that spanned different areas, from poorly managed expropriation processes and rampant theft in communities to inadequate supply of water and electricity.

Land-related conflicts, domestic violence, and late delivery of seeds to farmers as well as malpractices in the delivery of social protection programmes like VUP and One-Cow-per-Poor-Family were also filed among complaints.

As part of improving the Government’s ability to respond to the challenges, senators meeting the minister yesterday suggested that the local entities need to be empowered so they can better deal with citizens’ demands.

One of the suggested reforms is turning the sector level into a budget agency where the central government can directly send money meant for projects in order to fast-track the implementation process instead of depending on orders and financial support from the district.

Meeting expectations

Senator Jean Damascene Ntawukuriryayo suggested that the independence of sectors would help improve services provided in communities such as in health centres, schools, and feeder roads, among others.

"Why can’t we give sectors legal personality so they can have enough power to deliver a service?” he wondered.

The senator said expectations of citizens have changed over the last few years and they now demand more services and want them easily accessible.

"I think it’s time to rethink the way we serve our citizens,” he said.

Senator Perrine Mukankusi agreed, explaining that not only the sector level but also other entities at the lowest level of government need to be further empowered to improve service delivery.

"We need to empower those who are close to the people,” she said.

Minister Kaboneka agreed with the the lawmakers but indicated that turning sectors into budget agencies would be too costly for the central government as it would also have to hire more personnel in all the country’s 416 sectors.

Although it makes sense to let the sectors implement projects on their own, the minister said, it’s financially  more affordable to follow up on districts and having to deal with every sector in the country would prove fiscally onerous.

"The more financial capacity we get as a country the more we can decentralise services,” Kaboneka said.

The minister said the Government will soon, not later than June, conduct an  evaluation of the country’s decentralisation process over the last 16 years to ascertain the lessons learned in the process and what should be done next.

After the assessment, the Government will have a better idea of how to further decentralise the country’s governance and empower local entities, the minister added.

"What we want is for citizens to get services as easily as possible,” Kaboneka told the legislators.

The ongoing analyses of the reports submitted by different national commissions and the Office of the Ombudsman to Parliament will help the legislators draw up recommendations for the Government to take action.

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