Bugesera Leaders Tasked with Improving Service Delivery

The Minister of Local Government, Hon. Musabyimana Jean Claude, criticized some of the leaders of Bugesera District who do not provide good services to the people, asking them to reform and put the people first because they are the basis of their work.

He returned to this when concluding a three-day retreat that brought together workers from Bugesera district, sectors, and cells.

It was a retreat attended by more than 400 workers from the district, which aimed to self-evaluate and look at the problems together in order to find solutions.

Among the shortcomings observed is poor service delivery to the population. According to the research conducted by the Rwanda Governance Board (RGB), which shows the state of the districts in terms of services provided by local authorities in the two years of 2022–2023, Bugesera district came in 25th place out of 30 districts with 69.8% points.

“We want to see Bugesera District really appreciated, all the leaders we met, they all wish to see the residents themselves appreciate them. We want to see the people enjoy the services they receive and improve productivity and see their quality-of-life increase,” said Minister Musabyimana.

He revealed that elsewhere it will be seen in the performance where the welfare providers should increase, the leaders will fight obesity and malnutrition among children, the number of children who drop out of school will decrease, and the number of people in poverty will decrease significantly.

Minister Musabyimana continued that the result they expect from this workers retreat is to raise the standards of RGB because they want to see Bugesera District thanked by the residents for providing them with good services.

He said, “But this training will also produce results where the quality of life of the people will increase and be better than it is because if you don’t go forward, you will go backwards.”

Returning to the problem that the leaders of the cells showed that the reason why they may not provide good service is that they are few, Minister Musabyimana said that there is no reason why the leader should pretend not to provide good service to the people, either in terms of the number of each level of management, because the number goes with the responsibility they have.

Some leaders in this district are determined to make changes to improve the welfare of the people to a satisfactory level.

Celestin Haziruwiha, who works in the Kamabuye sector, Kampeka cell, says that they found a gap in the provision of services for the people, but after this retreat, there are things that will be put in more effort to make the service faster.

He said, “In this retreat, we have seen that there is a poor performance in providing better services to the people because there is often no interaction with the surrounding organizations, such as the youth, and other special groups that we often have. There are many things that we believe, if we work together, will raise the standard of service delivery to our people. Another thing is that our employees are committed to being held accountable for what we did not do well.”

Celestin concluded by asking the higher institutions to increase the number of employees because, compared to other institutions, including sectors and elsewhere, the employees working on the cell are few compared to the responsibilities they have.

During his speech at the event, Bugesera District Mayor Richard Mutabazi highlighted that this workers’ retreat has helped them see where they are weak and take measures to close the gap where things are not going well.

He said, “This retreat has shown us something that we should take care of more than anything else. Perhaps the weakness we can talk about here is to improve the service that someone provides, thinking that you have done your part and the rest will be done by someone else, but we have come to see that in order for the service to be better, it is for the citizen to help you with what you are responsible for and what you are not responsible for, and you are the one who conveys it to him.”

Mayor Mutabazi said that there are leaders who were approached by the people and helped them only for their own needs, but now they are determined that everyone who will receive a citizen will follow up on him until the service that he has received has been done properly.

At the national level, Rwandans are satisfied with the services they receive at a rate of 76.2%; the goal is that they should be satisfied with the services at a rate of 90% by the year 2024.