Budget awareness is crucial to citizens -RDO
By Desire Muhire.
Rwanda Development Organization (RDO) declares that citizens should have information on country’s budget and participate in its preparation to avoid duplicates and unnecessary budget orientation.
Eugene Rwibasira, RDO Executive Secretary emphasized on the issue during the training on Budget preparation and distribution provided by MINECOFIN experts, where various members of civil societies got basic knowledge to educate citizens they advocate for.
Rwibasira stated that citizens should have more space about budget usage because it is for their interest.
“Citizens are not ignorant as some people think, they might not be experts but they know what they need and prefer, they know if they need electricity rather than road, technicians should not sit down and formulate budget without citizen’s contribution and suggestions” Rwibasira said.
He gave a typical example, where one District constructed milk collection while its citizens do not have cows.
“Recently we visited Gatsibo District and residents showed us an unused milk collection because they do not breed cows, citizens told us that they are needy of banana plant instead of that milk collection. This is one example among many others, and the public funds and national economy are being misused” Rwibasira added.
Some residents agree with Rwibasira[…..]
Some citizens, interviewed by Rwandainsprirer.com agree with Rwibasira and argue that they should get enough space to contribute in budget orientation even if they are represented by advisory council at local government.
Innocent Munyampundu, who resides in Kanombe Sector, said “Yes we know that we have advisory council at Sector and District level but they can forget some issues, I propose that before adopting annual budget, grassroots citizens should be consulted and give their own opinions, I am sure some challenges such as duplicates activities and unnecessary works will be avoided” Munyampundu noted.
According to Mujawamariya who lives in Remera, there should be open meeting with citizens to share their suggestions on what they strongly want in their area.
“We cannot say that, as people with little experience, whatever we propose should be accepted, but we know what we can tell our leaders, we can tell them what activity is more urgent than the other one, this can avoid unnecessary activities which are constructed with enormous amount of budget but with no significance to the citizen in the area” she said.
Officials revealed that there are many unused infrastructures around the country such as markets, with root cause of not consulting citizens before their construction.
According to Executive Secretary of RDO, they will carry out advocacy to solve the issue and make Rwanda more progressive with grassroots’ citizen contribution to budget usage.
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