KIGALI - Kigali City Council (KCC) has given the Housing Bank of Rwanda (HBR) up to the end of this month to have completed compensating all people in Murama Cell, Kinyinya Sector in Gasabo District who incurred losses during the expropriation exercise.

The affected residents had petitioned the city and the Ministry of Local Government because the bank did not honour its side of the deal in the evaluation exercise.

The controversial 200 hectares of land, evaluated in April 2008, was supposed to see 1,028 families expropriated at the cost of Rwf6.4bn within four months as the law stipulates.

But only a few of them were paid, leading to some residents accusing the bank of causing them loses.
They claimed that the bank had prevented them from carrying out any farming activities and some of the residents had demolished their homes with the hope of being expropriated.

When contacted, Aimable Gasana Ndakengerwa, the Director General of Kigali City, confirmed the development and said that each of the affected families will be paid five percent of the total funds they were supposed to get during the expropriation exercise.

"We visited the area and we actually found many residents had incurred losses as a result of the anomaly . We therefore gave the bank one month (ending with May) to have finished paying item.” Ndakengerwa said.

"It is true, we agreed with Kigali city and the local government ministry to pay them in one month,” Gervais Ntaganda, the bank’s Director General said yesterday when contacted.

"We are now looking for money to pay them as agreed,” he added

The land was supposed to be jointly developed by the Rwanda Housing Bank (HBR) and the Social Security Fund of Rwanda (SSFR) but the project collapsed.

Ends