The President has begun his popular tour of the country to inspect developmental projects and listen to problems of the local population.

As has been the case in previous tours, the issue of local leaders failing in their tasks came to the fore front during President Kagame’s rounds in the Eastern Province.

The usual victims of the leaders’ shortcomings are the people they are supposed to lead, whose only salvation is getting a chance to bring their woes to the President’s attention.

Sometimes the solutions are so simple that it blows the mind why they were not tackled and solved at the grass roots level in the first place.

When the decentralization policy was put in place, it was meant to spare the central government from dealing with issues that could easily be handled at the local level. Where did it go wrong?

Listening to the Imihigo (targets to be achieved) from the local leaders, one would think that all is bliss with the population, that they have attentive leaders in their communities who have their interests at heart.

Imihigo should not just be a matter of totting up points, it should not just be statistics, but results oriented, because results speak volumes.

Local leaders’ achievements should be measured by the level of delivering services to the satisfaction of the populace; otherwise they will have a lot of answering when  HE next gives them a call.

Ends