National

HUYE — The National Taskforce of Itorero ry’ igihugu is set to become a commission in a bid to effectively involve trainees in the socio-economic development of the country, a top official in the taskforce has said.

William Ntidendereza, the Vice Chairman of Itorero, was speaking on Tuesday during a programme involving training of trainers who will manage camps at the village level.

Itorero is a national civic education programme through which various sections of Rwandans are enrolled to educate masses on national policies.

The training in Huye was co-organised by the Itorero taskforce and the National Electoral Commission (NEC).

Recently, Itorero was decentralised to the village and school level to bring everybody on board.

Ntidendereza observed that currently, a law transforming the taskforce into a commission is before parliament and that once passed, it will set grounds for the new commission.

The taskforce currently operates under the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission.

Once it becomes a commission, the taskforce will have the capacity to coordinate activities of all people who undergo the training in a bid to amplify their contribution to community development, he observed.

It is expected that the commission will have seven commissioners and a representative in every district.

“Transforming the Taskforce into a commission will give it more powers and more capacities to coordinate activities of all the categories of people who were trained. This will surely help us to involve them more in developmental activities”, Ntidendereza said.

Since its inception in 2007, over 300,000 people have passed through the civic education programme.

They mainly include groups of people who were previously focal targets, among them teachers, leaders, students, youth, and community health workers, among others.

Itorero was established to help people develop through mindset change as well as respect of Rwandan cultural values including dignity, mutual respect, patriotism and hard work, among others.