KIGALI - The Ministry of Local Government (Minaloc) has been called in to settle a long standing land dispute in Kinyinya Sector, Gasabo District.

The ministry is scheduled to hold a joint meeting next month with all institutions involved to assess the situation that has affected over 1500 area residents.

Speaking to The New Times, the coordinator of policy inspection and capacity building in Minaloc, Fred Mufuruki, said that they will engage all institutions that were involved in the expropriation exercise to resolve the land saga in Murama cell in Kinyinya.

"The Kinyinya issue came to our notice recently but we want to hold a joint meeting with all institutions that were cited in the expropriation exercises as a way of handling it from the grass roots.”

The institutions involved include the Housing Bank of Rwanda (HBR) and the Social Security Fund of Rwanda, and other developers of the 100 hectares.

Residents recently fully regained authority over the land as they had earlier demanded after the district told HBR that they no longer had claim over the land.

Nevertheless, the residents are demanding to be compensated for the losses they incurred during the course of events especially after their houses were demolished with hope of being expropriated as earlier agreed.

Mufuruki however, said that if it is found out that the residents demolished houses themselves, there would be no compensation.

"The law is quite clear; everyone has authority of their properties until they are expropriated. No one is supposed to demolish his or her house even when their properties have been evaluated,” he said.

The acting Mayor of Gasabo District, Willy Ndizeye, had earlier said in a telephone interview that there will be no compensation because the residents demolished their houses themselves.

When asked about alleged corruption in the expropriation exercise where residents accused the bank of conniving with the local authorities, Ndizeye said; "I was not aware of that but we will look into it”.

The residents allege that the bank paid all the local leaders from the village to the sector level without following the procedures which was supposed to be in alphabetical order.

The leaders’ names they say were supposed to come last but they were expropriated, skipping other names on the list.

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