Senators have resolved to summon the Minister for Agriculture, Gérardine Mukeshimana, to explain why the country’s plan to store grains to cushion against famine is not being fully implemented.
Under the national grain strategic reserve programme, the Government committed to store 200,000 tonnes of grains (mainly maize) from the 2016-2017 harvest but senators said on Wednesday that most of the national granaries are empty.
This, they said, was noticed during a recent countrywide tour by senators on the standing committee on economic development and finance.
According to Senator Jacqueline Muhongayire, the chairperson of the committee, the ministry was not doing enough to achieve the objective.
Senators also expressed concern that over 100,000 tonnes of the 195,000 tonnes of grain the ministry says is in granaries are being kept by farmers, which the legislators criticised saying this was impossible to prove.
Besides, they added, the quality of grains stored at the household level cannot be trusted given the lack of post-harvesting handling skills at the grassroots.
The Government, senators says, should always ensure that there is enough grains to feed the country for at least three consecutive months during times of shortage of food.
Muhongayire said this would not be possible in the event that acute food shortage is experienced today.
“The Senate should summon the Minister to come and explain to the plenary what kind of concrete measures are in place to implement the national grain reserve programme,” she said.
Debate ensued after the presentation of the committee findings, with some senators wondering why they should summon the minister when members of the committee had already spoken to the ministry at the time they were compiling the report.
Others said it would not be appropriate to summon the minister since the prime minister, Edouard Ngirente, had just presented to the bicameral parliament government strategies to improve agriculture sector. The premier addressed parliament about the sector this week.
Senator Jean-Damascène Ntawukuriryayo backed the committee’s recommendation saying there are serious issues the minister needs to the Upper Chamber.
After the debate, Senate president Bernard Makuza put the matter to a vote and 20 out of 24 senators voted to summon the minister.
Cabinet ministers are summoned to the House through the Prime Minister’s Office.
minister.
Prosecutors have over the past three years seized up to 234 land titles and frozen 29 individual bank accounts as part of efforts to recover stolen taxpayers’ money, an official has said.
Jean Marie Vianney Nyirurugo, the head of economic and financial unit at the National Public Prosecution Authority (NPPA), said Wednesday that the seizures were conducted under the 2015 law governing public asset recovery.
Nyirurugo, who was speaking at an event where Transparency International Rwanda unveiled its analysis of the Auditor General report on Wednesday, said the frozen bank accounts involved more than Rwf300 million linked too corruption cases under investigation.
“We freeze assets of some people because we know that they are likely to start hiding their properties or start transferring it to other people once they have been placed under investigation,” he said. “We can also seize property even if it has no clear connection with the offence committed but the suspect cannot explain its origin,” Nyirurugo said.
He added: “It is only after someone has been tried in court, at all levels; that the stolen funds can be recovered. But we also try to recover public funds before taking the suspect to court, but this is only when a suspect accepts to bring back the money”.
At the international level, he said, assets acquired fraudulently are traced through mutual legal assistance requests, and joint investigations. He listed countries contacted by Rwanda in this effort, including Nigeria, Central African Republic (CAR), Canada, Uganda, Spain and Belgium.
Domestically, criminal assets are traced through bank accounts, motor-vehicle registration, land title registration, and capital market shares.
Nyirurugo said more than Rwf3.7 billion in taxpayers’ money has been recovered – as a result of 770 criminal cases involving 999 convicts – between 2013 and 2017.
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