Dear editor,

When I read the article published in the Newtimes of Saturday, June 7, 2008 on page 6, with the following heading: "Parliament: Building for the people”, I wanted to make some comments on this article.

In some paragraphs, the journalist said that some people are elected to Parliament and do not go back to the communities and there are some promises which are not fulfilled by Parliamentarians. I am asking: "is it the reality for our Rwanda Parliamentarians?”

If you look at the main missions of our Chamber of Deputies, which consist in voting laws and overseeing the government activities, those missions are well performed by our Parliamentarians.

According to our recent history, Rwanda has made many reforms in all sectors of Rwandans’ life: economic, social, judicial, administrative, etc.

To implement policies related to these reforms, our Parliament work hard every day in order to put in place laws which will help in the implementation of these policies and reforms.

Actually, since October 2008 up to date, our Parliament has voted about 225 laws in all fields of life. This is the reason why Parliamentarians work in the morning in standing committee and in the afternoon in the plenary session, and all the time they do not have recess as provided for under our Constitution.

Many of these laws are elaborated in concentration with concerned persons and other are initiated by the Parliamentarians.

As for the Government oversight mission, until now about 23 oversight activities have been conducted in various sectors by the Chamber of Deputies. Six ad hoc committees have been put in place to scrutinize in details the problems raised and faced by the communities.

Such as: killings based on genocide ideology in all the former 106 Districts in 2004, Public Sector reform, management of FARG, mismanagement of public funds, genocide ideology in the secondary schools, mismanagement of state reserves of oils, etc.

During these 5 years, about 70 field visits have been organised by the standing committees and every Parliamentarian has the right to individual field visit twice a month, and they do it regularly to meet the population in various activities.

The Chamber of Deputies established a standing committee in charge of handling petitions of the communities addressed to Parliament.

In this way, every 30 minutes in the beginning of each session are devoted to the population’s petitions addressed to Parliamentarians and through that mechanisms many of these petitions received appropriate responses.

In my opinion, our Parliamentarians do a lot and perform very well the missions devoted to Parliament. Out of these remarquable and admirable achievements and the work done by our Parliamentarians, Are there any other promises which are not fulfilled? Which one?

Fore more details on achievements of Rwanda Parliament: laws voted, oversight activities conducted, fields visits, etc., please contact the Unit in charge of Press and Communication in Rwanda Parliament: phone: 582911/ 08404924, e- mail: presse@rwanda1.com.

Parliament