Government in fresh bid to relocate disaster zone dwellers

Government targets to get more than 5,000 households in Muhanga District out of high risk disaster areas, a top official at the Rwanda Housing Authority (RHA) has said. Of the 7, 039 households in high risk zones contrywide— mostly swamps and steep slopes— 5,620 are in Muhanga alone, according to Augustin Kampayana, head of human settlement, planning, and development at RHA. The government has now concentrated efforts in the district, investing over Rwf1 billion to help get the concerned households in Muhanga out of high risk zones. Kampayana says the money includes Rwf800 million from the national Fund for Environment and Climate Change (Fonerwa) and Rwf250 million from Model Villages programme, a national project. Kampayana told The New Times last week that another major assessment will be conducted next month to ascertain the number of households that remain in high risk zones in the district. “We are concentrating on Muhanga. We shall assess by December the extra efforts needed to relocate people living in high risk zones,” Kampayana said. The official said relocating people in Muhanga’s high risk disaster zones has proved difficult due to the topography of the district, where entire villages had to be shifted in certain sectors. “It is beyond our imagination. In Muhanga, an entire sector of Nyabinoni was shifted to Rongi Sector,” he said. Since September 2012, central and local government officials as well as military and police personnel have been trying to relocate some 47,474 households across the country from disaster-prone areas to safer settlements. The operation is coordinated by a special national committee, the “National Joint Technical Committee”, headed by Kampayana. The committee worked with local officials across the country to map households in prone areas and pooled funds from both central Government and districts’ budgets to build new homes for the poor, and sensitised those who were relatively well off to find new homes on their own. It has so far succeeded in relocating 85 per cent of all households in high risk zones, according to a September 2012 government assessment. All the districts have so far reported having relocated all the households in high risk zones according to the 2012 baseline apart from Muhanga (5, 620), Gasabo (654), Nyamagabe (325), Nyabihu (183), Karongi(196), Ngororero (31), and Rutsiro (30). Kampayana said apart from Muhanga which still has a big number of residents in high risk zones, the situation is not alarming in other districts since the remaining households can be relocated any time. “It’s not a big threat because there are efforts to relocate them,” he said. In areas where people were evacuated from high risk zones, the official said the government will concentrate on rehabilitation activities such as reforestation and making terraces to keep the soil intact. Muhanga mayor Yvonne Mutakwasuku agrees that moving people from high risk areas in the district remains a challenge but insists it can be solved. “Getting people out of high risk areas is a big challenge but can be fixed with time,” she told The New Times in an interview on Tuesday. The mayor said the district will build homes for the most poor and vulnerable while those who are deemed better off will be given plots of land where they can build their new homes. Mutakwasuku estimated that by the end of the current fiscal year (in June 2015), about 3,000 households in high risk areas in the district would have been moved to safer zones.

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Government in fresh bid to relocate disaster zone dwellers