Members of the parliamentary Standing Committee on Political Affairs and Gender have urged the Ministry for Finance and Economic Planning to tighten rules and make it difficult for different employers and contractors to go on with their businesses without paying employees’ wages and pension contributions.

Finance minister Claver Gatete was appearing before the committee yesterday to speak about issues of unpaid workers as some employers, especially districts and private contractors who abandon public work contracts, fail to pay their service providers as well as the issue of employees whose pension contributions are not paid.

The issues were raised in the Ombudsman’s report for 2016/17, along with other concerns such as of Genocide orphans who up to now can’t benefit from their parents’ pension from Rwanda Social Security Board (RSSB) because they spent too long without asking for it, and the issue of bank debtors whose properties are auctioned at a lower value than their worth.

The MPs have embarked on scrutiny of the Ombudsman’s report with hope that they can influence policies and bring about more fairness.

Committee chair Alfred Rwasa Kayiranga said a deadline should be set up for both the central government and local governments to clear any debts whether they accrued from services rendered or as part of expropriation processes.

"There has to be a way of ending these debts. There should be a deadline for people who say that the Government owes them money to come forward with evidence so that the Government clears them,” he said.

MP Euthalie Nyirabega emphasised that a time-frame to clear all pending government debts to citizens is needed.

"We want to end corruption and injustice. We need a timeframe on when people who were fleeced by public work contractors can be paid so that the government is cleared of these debts,” she said.

As for contractors who fail to pay their service providers without necessarily closing their businesses, MP Théoneste Begumisa Safari said stringent measures should be initiated to reverse the trend.

"There has to be sanctions for those who fail to pay for services rendered to them. Everyone should be held accountable whether it’s contractors who failed to pay their employees or budget managers in Government who fail to execute payments while the money is available,” he said.

MP Evariste Kalisa agreed, saying denying private contractors access to future public contracts is not enough while their former employees languish in poverty.

"It’s a big problem because we hear reports everyday about people who don’t get paid for their work. It’s okay to blacklist someone for failing to pay for services but more measures need to be taken so they can be held accountable,” he said.

On the issue of pension benefits for survivors who lost their parents during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, the legislators said there is an imbalance created by a legal gap at the moment.

They said that before RSSB law was changed in 2015 to end a 10-year deadline by which a pension claimant was eligible to ask for such benefits, survivors who sent in their claims after a 10-year delay were denied their benefits.

But when the law was changed in 2015, those who sent in their claims thereafter were given benefits while those who had previously requested to get the benefits and were denied the rights still can’t get them today because the law was not yet in place when they sent in their claims.

That situation creates imbalance in the way RSSB clients who are Genocide survivors and other citizens who delayed to claim for their benefits are served today, hence MPs want an amendment of the RSSB law to address the concerns.

"There should be a clear policy to address this problem in a way that is fair for every claimant,” said MP Safari.

With regards to employers who don’t pay pension contributions for their employees, RSSB officials told MPs that awareness campaigns are needed to ensure that the trend is reversed because those who don’t pay pension money for their full-time employees are in breach of the law.

"We need to continue awareness campaigns to ensure that employers respect the law. Not paying pension contributions for employees is a breach of law,” said RSSB director-general Jonathan Gatera.

Minister Gatete told the legislators that his ministry will work with other institutions to address the concerns raised, explaining that efforts to fight corruption and any other other ills are a continuous process.

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