Gicumbi District administration has been directed to pay Rwf97 million to various contracted private service providers they are indebted. Several of them had already taken the matter to courts of law.

The directive was announced by the district advisory council after a fiery meeting characterised by controversy.
According to findings by the advisory council committee in charge of economic planning, over 39 projects stalled due to lack of payment for services rendered.

"We incur losses when the debt takes long to be settled, so, the district should take our matter seriously,” said Augustine Munyakazi, one of the contractors demanding over Rwf800,000 for the last ten months over office equipment he supplied to the district.

Among the creditors, are residents of Kageyo Sector, who were contracted to trim terraces.

One of the residents told The New Times that that they have been demanding Rwf14 million in the last nine months.
"We don’t know what happened, we worked thinking that we would be paid after providing our services but we are giving up because it has been long; we don’t know if we will get this money because the district has given us a deaf ear,” said Damascene Niyibizi. 

However, the district vice mayor in charge of finance and economic planning, Alexandre Nvuyekure, explained that some of the complainants did not provide proper documentation as proof for services rendered.

"Several service providers did not present proper documents as a basis to pay them, some were denied payments because they did not accomplish their duties,” Nvuyekure said, adding that some disagreed with the district on some elements of the services provided.

He added that the district officials were doing their best to settle all the cases petitioned to courts.
Senator Jean Batiste Bizimana urgedconcerned local officials to solve the matters amicably.

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