Nyaruguru district officials in Southern Rwanda and the Civil Society Platform on Thursday reached a consensus on approving the district’s annual budget together for the good of the district residents.
The decision to harmonize the budget strategies comes amid what appears to be growing blame game and counter accusations when annual performance contracts’ results for Rwanda’s 30 districts come out.
There is a misunderstanding from both sides – the district leadership and development partners like local NGOs – that one side’s poor performance has impacted on their ranking and everybody trying to portray themselves with a good light.
However, that won’t be the case anymore if Thursday’s agreement is anything to go by.
“We are happy that we will be having a say on the draft budget before it can be voted for implementation,” said Callixte Bizumuremyi, a Civil Society Platform representative in Nyaruguru district.
“All we do is for the benefit of the population and the civil society links us up with the same population whom they so closely represent. So such an agreement will help us a lot in truly knowing what the population needs,” said Nelson Muhayimana, Nyaruguru Planning Officer.
He added that the civil society will help them with sensitizing the population on different policies.
The district budget is allocated to different programmes in the realms of economy, good governance, justice and social affairs, from the cell level up to the district level.
The district executive council used to deliberate on the development programmes on its own, hearing little or none at all from a number of civil society organizations – a scenario Thursday’s consensus will see changing in the days ahead.