Police in Burera District have arrested Thaddée Niyonsabe, a road construction engineer at the Base, Butaro, Kidaho road construct project (BBK), in connection with fraudulent use and destruction of company property.

Niyonsabe is also facing charges of registering a "ghost casual worker.”

According to the Police spokesperson for the Northern region, Inspector of Police (IP) Innocent Gasasira, the engineer was arrested following a complaint filed by NPD Ltd.

"We immediately arrested the engineer on September 9, who is also accused of selling over 30 trucks of stones extracted from the road construction site, and selling over 50 cords of wood,” IP Gasasira said.

Niyonsabe is currently held at Rusarabuye Police station in Burera District as investigations into the case proceed.

"The wood and stones were taken from the site where people had been expropriated; they were supposed to be handed over to local authorities to use them for public interest, but the suspect instead sold them,” he added.

"We are still investigating the case to ascertain if the suspect worked alone or if there are others involved and to come up with a conclusive case file to forward to prosecution for further judicial proceedings,” said the spokesperson.

On the issue of ghost workers, preliminary investigations have so far identified names of one person, who is not an employee but records indicate that the suspect had paid the ghost worker Rwf34, 000 covering a period of four weeks, according to Police.

The construction and upgrading of Base-Butaro-Kidaho road intends to cover 63km. The scope of the works include sidewalks, drainage system, construction and finishing layer or wearing course will be made of Asphalt concrete.

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