Rwanda steps up measures to curb disaster tragedy

The government is putting in more effort in averting disaster damages, mainly those resulting from deadly floods, in order to save people’s lives and mitigate economic loss, Prime Minister Edouard Ngirente has said. The efforts, he indicated, include scaling up anti-erosion action such as by increasing the area covered by terraces countrywide, ensuring that new houses are only built outside high disaster risk zones, and containing River Sebeya overflow that has proven destructive thus far. ALSO READ: Death toll from disasters reaches 135, over 20,000 left homeless Ngirente made the observations on Friday, June 30, while briefing the Parliament’s joint plenary sitting mainly focused on what the Government is doing as regards disaster management and prevention. The Premier indicated that from 2017 to May 2023 -a six-year period - disasters caused by floods affected different parts of the country, killing 1,289 people, and injuring 2,114 others. Disasters ruined about 51,700 houses and damaged 33,000 hectares of farmlands with crops, and killed over 1,900 cows as well as more than 12,800 small livestock animals. Also destroyed were more than 1,300 classrooms, while the disasters also damaged parts of 479 roads, 484 bridges, more than 230 water systems and 750 electricity transmission lines, Ngirente added. The disasters inflicted major loss on us,” he told parliamentarians. “Though you cannot eliminate disasters, there are efforts we have to put into protecting our environment so that disasters are reduced or when they occur, they do not claim the lives of people, or their impact is mitigated, he said. ALSO READ: Economy loses over Rwf200 billion through disasters Ngirente observed that though Rwanda experienced disasters over the years, “it is the first time we had disasters that claimed the lives of more than 130 people in one night,” referring to the death toll of the disasters caused by heavy rains on the night of May 2 and May 3. Among others, he said, the Government will reinforce a project for containing excessive River Sebeya waters. The river located in Western Province, is one of the contributors to disasters. ALSO READ: Sebeya River no longer threat to community - Water board Ngirente said that there is a project for containing Sebeya's waters, indicating that the river is one of the contributors to disasters. Residents near Sebeya were the most hit by the recent disasters, and some of them lost their lives, he said. He indicated that infrastructure including dams meant to prevent floods that result from the river overspill, are being set up. That is an area where we are putting a lot of effort because it is like the issue is recurrent annually. We want to completely contain it and we have started relocating people from Sebeya banks that are not safe for living in, but also protect the area which is habitable, he remarked. There is a plan to encourage people, especially young people, who want to build their new homes to have them in areas far away from the high disaster-risk zones. We encourage them to build on sites suitable for housing so that those new families will not be affected by disasters in the near future.” On erosion control, he said that interventions include planting grass and anti-erosive trees on farms. This will go hand in hand with establishing terraces on land slopes in mountainous areas. He pointed out that the Government is fast-tracking an anti-erosion programme that started in May 2022 in parts of the country that are prone to erosion. Overall, the Premier said, progressive terraces have been formed on 397,000 hectares countrywide, against the 489,000 hectares targeted by the end of 2023, a coverage of 81 per cent.

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Rwanda steps up measures to curb disaster tragedy