The accusations and counter-accusations session saw ministers, department heads and local officials blaming each other over the ravaging problem of soil erosion. Available data shows that the country is losing tens of thousands of tones of top soils every year.
Part of the solution worked out over the years was for districts to employ Genocide convicts to make terraces, plant trees and grass – as well as undertake big reforestation programmes. The community service program is known by the French name Travaux d’Interet Général (TIG). The people are commonly called TIGISTS.
Several programmes have been adopted but as it appeared Thursday, soil erosion remains a major constraint to agricultural development.
However, figures presented showed that no district had managed to control soil erosion, and again, as it had been with other issues discussed, President Kagame was on-hand demanding for answers. He accused government officials of negligence.
Senator Joseph Karemera set the exchanges boiling after he said the districts had failed manage erosion because there was no money to feed these TIGISTS when they are working. The Executive Secretary of TIG Everest Bizimana was now in the hot seat. He defended himself by revealing that there out of the 90,000 convicts, some 60,000 have never been deployed to do anything.
He said there districts and the relevant departments have not provided the financing for the TIG activities. The Secretariat apparently also requested from government to be given land such the TIGISTS can produce their own food such that they are employed only to work.
The new Agriculture Minister, Dr. Agnes Kalibata pushed all the blame on districts which have the money for implementing soil erosion programmes. With difficulty, the minister laboured explained that there is funding from government and the European Union for supporting local governments for environment programmes.
The district mayors and the different top officials who were brought into the spot raised different responses – to which the President seemed unconvinced.
“The problem is you the administrators,” he said as he summed up almost an hour of heated accusations.
In the afternoon, new Minister for Forest and Mines and the Agriculture Minister were again in the spotlight over the GIRA-INKA program – in which poor families are given cows.