By 7am on Tuesday morning, youth volunteer Onesphore Nzayisenga was already working at Nyabugogo Taxi Park.  

Nzayisenga, who has been volunteering since the partial lifting of the lockdown, says that the biggest challenge has been the inconsistent flow of water.

"The lines are long and not only are the washing stations few, but there is no constant water flow. It has been challenging and we expect it to get worse now that the number of people has gone up,” Nzayisenga says.

At Remera Taxi Park, different categories of people were spotted boarding buses, some heading upcountry to reunite with their families after the government approved the resumption of inter-provincial travel.

Marie-Claire Niwemugeni works at a restaurant at the Park. She says that the water issue brought the park to a standstill on Monday when it stopped flowing.

"It becomes a problem when you want large numbers of people to wash their hands and there is no flowing water. There was confusion here yesterday when taxi park management had to purchase sanitizers because the water had suddenly stopped flowing. The water issue should be addressed,” she said.

Their boss, National Coordinator of the Rwanda Youth Volunteers in Community Policing (RYVCP), Abdallah Murenzi agrees.

Murenzi says that the inconsistency in water supply at high human traffic hot spots within the City of Kigali (CoK) must be rectified if the gains made in the fight against Covid-19 are to be maximised.

Murenzi was responding to questions regarding the youth volunteers that have been deployed in hotspots like taxi parks, markets and on streets to guide the masses to wash hands, wear facemasks and maintain a one-meter distance.

"There is an issue of lack of enough water. WASAC water is not consistent at all but the City of Kigali has requested the management of sites like parks or markets to install tanks as a backup plan now that the human traffic has greatly increased,” he said.

Murenzi specifically pointed out an issue at Remera Taxi Park on Monday where there was a sudden halt in the WASAC water flow, forcing the management to improvise with hand sanitizers.

"The hand sanitizers are expensive and you just can’t buy enough to service such a crowd. WASAC needs to be pushed to ensure that hot spots have a constant water flow,” he said.

In a telephone interview, the Chairperson of the Rwanda Federation of Transport Cooperatives (RFTC); Col (Rtd) Ludovic Dodo Twahirwa, said that although WASAC has pledged a consistent water flow, his institution was installing water tanks in all the parks.

"We have three washing points in Nyabugogo, two in Remera, one in Kimironko and two in Kabuga. WASAC has given us their word that there won’t be another water shortage but still, we will be installing water tanks in all these areas this week,” he said.

Deploying volunteers

A total of 960 volunteers have been sent to the streets to ensure that the masses are following guidelines.

The youths are facilitated by the City of Kigali with work jackets, face masks, and are facilitated with resources for food, communication and transport.

Information availed by the Rwanda Youth Volunteers in Community Policing (RYVCP), reveals that the youth are trained by the national police on large crowd management, ethics and discipline on how best to contribute to public order.

The youth are spread across districts in teams of 20 to 30.

There are 381,000 youth volunteers countrywide. 5,970 of these are currently involved in the fight against COVID-19.