KIGALI - Finance and Economic Planning minister James Musoni has called on district mayors to embrace job creation as a way of solving problems affecting the people they lead. Musoni was speaking yesterday at Kigali Serena Hotel during an evaluation workshop of performance contracts signed by district mayors.  "Your responsibilities should not only end at settling land disputes but also ensuring that people get a long lasting and stable source of income,” he said.

Executive secretaries of different sectors also attended the workshop.

Musoni implored them to create industrial parks in their districts, adding that time was up for Rwandans to diversify from agriculture to reaping fruits of industrialisation.
He urged the mayors to ensure that in their 2008 objectives people acquire land registration tittles to make it easy for them to access bank loans.

Mayors were upbeat that they have laid strategies that would attract investors in 2008 which will in turn create jobs for the people.

"We have a multi-million road construction plan that will have about fifty projects in it. A lot of money will be paid through bank accounts to those that will take up these jobs,” the Mayor of Burera District (Northern province), Aime Bosenibamwe, said.

Kamonyi District (Southern province) mayor, Jean Paul Munyandamutsa said: "There is a sixty-two hectare piece of land that we shall give to a prospective investor to build housing estates, but we are also targeting investors in many potential fields such as milk production and fruit processing.”

Meanwhile, Eugene Barikana, the Secretary General in the Ministry of Local Government, said that local leaders were still lacking capacity and enough funding to fight poverty at the grassroots.

He said that despite some challenges, mayors had registered many enormous achievements in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Vision 2020 objectives.
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