A survey conducted in six districts has shed light on the issues in the land expropriation process with a whopping 60 percent of the respondents defining the processes, especially in valuation, as ‘unfair’.

Expropriation is done by the State in order to pave the way for public interest projects such as roads, energy projects and other public infrastructure projects.

The report was commissioned by Strengthening Rwandan Administrative Justice (SRAJ) Project and prepared by the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR-Rwanda) and the University of Massachusetts Boston.

The findings came at the conclusion of an analysis made through consultation conducted with citizens, public officials, and group discussions held with land officials in Gasabo, Kicukiro, Bugesera, Rubavu, Kamonyi and Gicumbi districts.  

The respondents were mostly those who went through expropriation due to projects involving the construction of future power plants, roads, or an airport.

A high proportion of them were farmers who were prompted to file a formal complaint because they risked losing not only a place to live but land critical to their subsistence.

The complaints

The report highlights a number of procedural challenges including many legally required processes that still need to be adopted via ministerial regulation or those that were not implemented as intended.

For instance, expropriation law stipulates that should a citizen disagree with their property being on the expropriation list, he or she can challenge the decision in court within 30 days.

Land owners who disagree with the valuation decision can make an appeal to the district within 10 days, including using a counter-valuator.

If the district government rejects the complaint/counter-valuation, the citizen can still appeal this decision within 15 days.

These timelines have been found unfavourable by most.

The Resident Country Director of the SRAJ project Seth Karamage told The New Times in an interview that although there has been important substantive reforms including a new expropriation law in 2015, a number of challenges remain.

Karamage said that for instance, interviewees said that the process above is sometimes not honored in practice and many found the timelines unrealistic.

"The interviewees also criticised the short time frames for counter- valuation efforts to be undertaken with most saying that it is unrealistic with quite a number saying that it puts them at a real disadvantage especially because it is impossible to find the money required to hire an independent valuer at such short notice,” he said.

Karamage shed light on the value of providing easy to understand information to the land expropriation beneficiaries adding that some of the issues can be fixed by better planning and better advance communication by local authorities.

"Of the 72 percent of respondents who did not pursue a second instance appeal, 14 percent said they were satisfied with the initial evaluation while 60 percent of the respondents who did not pursue an appeal did not even know that a further appeal was available to them,” he said.

However, 38 percent said they did not pursue an appeal because they lacked sufficient information about how to do so.

When respondents were asked about what kinds of information they would have liked to receive more, 53 percent cited information about public consultations while 42 percent said that they would have wanted to know about the valuation process and their right to counter-valuation.

40 percent wished to have been notified about the intended expropriation while 28 percent wished that they had been given information on appeal rights and timeframes for appeal.

No consultations

However, while consultations conducted by government officials were generally deemed helpful with 77 percent of respondents finding it somewhat helpful or very helpful, two out of three individuals affected by an expropriation process were not consulted by districts before the latter took a decision to expropriate.

Only 10 percent of the complainants were given an opportunity to negotiate with a developer on the value of the land and/or any property incorporated thereon (in cases where consultations of this kind were not otherwise conducted by district officials.

If and when they were informed, respondents mentioned that they received the information in writing (52 percent), through a public meeting (18 percent), or by other verbal means (22 percent).

Sixty-four percent (64 percent) of the respondents were dissatisfied with the outcome of the property valuation while 61 percent decried the late payment of compensation which takes six months and more.

10 percent pursued a counter-valuation through an independent property valuer, and of these individuals, 64 percent of the counter- assessment reports were considered, which resulted in some increase above the valuation.

Last month, the Parliament’s Chamber of Deputies resolved to summon Uzziel Ndagijimana, the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, in order to explain the progress on paying outstanding expropriation compensations to affected citizens countrywide.

The Vice President of the Chamber of Deputies, MP Edda Mukabagwiza, told a plenary session to receive a report on a countrywide tour aimed to assess the state of infrastructure that there was a need to look into the long periods it takes for government to disburse expropriation fees.

"There are citizens who have not been compensated since their expropriation in 2013. We why compensation has taken that long,” she said.

At the beginning of last year, the government was working on plans to pay a total of Rwf30bn that it owes in expropriation fees countrywide.

According to the Director General of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation in the Ministry of Local Government, Yves-Bernard Ningabire; the biggest chunk of the money was owed by the Rwanda Energy Group (REG) to the tune of Rfw15bn while the Water and Sanitation Corporation (WASAC) owes Rfw156m.

In November 2017, a report by the Rwanda Civil Society Platform indicated that at least 30 per cent of land expropriation claimants in the country face delays in receiving their compensation.

The report indicated that in different expropriation processes that had been taking place, only 69 per cent of the people interviewed in 12 districts across the country received their compensation within 120 days as prescribed by the law, while 31 percent of the cases faced delays.

According to the study, 74.4 per cent of the expropriation projects were owned by the central government, 18.8 were initiated by the local government, and only 6.9 belonged to private investors.