The swiftness with which the Ministry of Agriculture and its stakeholders have conducted the exercise of tracking down people who illegally benefitted from the ‘One Cow’ programme is a demonstration of how this government means business.

The issue of wrong individuals benefitting from the project came to the limelight during the National Dialogue that took place a fortnight ago.

We reported yesterday that the Ministry of Agriculture has come up with a figure totalling 17,000 animals to be repossessed by government and later on re-distributed to the rightful beneficiaries.

Despite the fact that the concerned ministry only learnt of this issue after it was raised during Umushyikirano, their promptness in rectifying the problem should be commended.
Hoping that process of selecting the needy beneficiaries was more transparent this time round, there won’t be a repeat of the mismanagement of the project.

The excuse used by some grassroots leaders that the poor people, meant to benefit from this project, were incapable of looking after the animals, is bizarre and quite absurd.

Government did not introduce this project to benefit the well to-do, but rather those within the extreme poverty bracket as one of the key strategies of improving the lives of the Rwandan people.

As the re-distribution exercise commences, local authorities have to be keen and vigilant to ensure that only poor Rwandans benefit from the project.

However, this should also serve as an example to other government organs implementing various programmes to always put in place systems that ensure checks and balances.

These systems must be designed in such way that programmes benefit the rightful people, instead of waiting for the President’s intervention,  as was the case in the ‘One Cow’ programme.

Ends