Bugesera District on Tuesday handed bicycles to 30 unity and reconciliation facilitators to ease transport in their activities, a development that was welcomed by the beneficiaries. The bicycles were donated to two members of unity and reconciliation facilitators committees in each of the 15 sectors of the district, whose role is to entrench principles of unity and reconciliation at the community level. Jacqueline Nyiramayonde from Mayange Sector, said their responsibility is to facilitate reconciliation between families of perpetrators of the Genocide against the Tutsi and the survivors. The bicycles will ease our activities to facilitate unity and reconciliation. We have been doing our work on foot which is not easy traversing the entire sector on foot. With a means of transport, we are going to achieve even more, she said. She said that the main challenge they face is the fact that those who committed the Genocide do not accept their wrongdoings, making it a long journey for them to accept what they did and to be friends with survivors. But things are improving with time, she continued; there is more harmony to an extent that some have intermarrying. Vedaste Rwabukanga, 56, facilitator from Mwogo Sector, said they have now more focused on the youth, sensitizing them on unity and building a better Rwanda, and that the results are promising. There is a big improvement, the youth are getting a stronger understanding of Rwandan history and a need for their participation in preventing genocide ideology and divisionism, he told The New Times. Richard Mutabazi, Mayor of Bugesera District, explained that the committee in every sector is made of chairperson, vice chairperson and the secretary. He said the bicycles were given to the vice chairpersons and secretaries. The chairpersons received their bicycles a few months ago. Reconciliation is not something you do today and sit back and say that you have achieved it; it is a continuous process; even where you have achieved it, you need to sustain the gains made,” Mutabazi said. Last year, Bugesera emerged second in a reconciliation barometer that was released by the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission.
