Gov’t orders return of 17,000 diverted cows

KIGALI - At least 17,500 cows distributed under the ‘One cow per poor household’ programme, locally known as ‘Girinka’, will be repossessed by the government after it was established that they went to the wrong beneficiaries. This was announced yesterday by the Minister of Agriculture, Dr Agnes    Kalibata, during a press conference to unveil the exercise to reclaim the cows. Kalibata said that for the past two weeks, the ministry of Agriculture has embarked on a process of identifying the wrong beneficiaries from the bonafide recipients. “The first phase to identify those who illegally acquired the cows indicates that over a quarter of the distributed cows went to the wrong people,” Kalibata told a press conference yesterday.