Kinyinya residents take their Mayor to task

KINYINYA - Owners of 140 hectares of land the National Social Security Fund of Rwanda is expropriating in Kinyinya, Gasabo District, have accused their mayor of siding with the investor. The made the accusations during a meeting with Mayor Claudine Nyinawagaga at Kinyinya Sector yesterday“Why should you side with the investor [NSSR]? Who will be on our side?” a jilted resident, Seminega Jean Bosco asked her. “This is a public interest decision. Cabinet agreed on prices. It is the law,” she could only say. The residents who were wearing mean faces could not take any of that. They accused the district of being indifferent to its residents and inconsistent in its planning business. The residents told the mayor that they are not opposed to the Kigali Master Plan, but its haphazard implementation and ineptness of the district officials. “How could I have wrote to your office and not received a response for the last two years?” one lady a charged her.“Acquiring a land title from your office takes two years, madam mayor,” Joseph Mpunga chipped in. You could read a sense of frustration on his face. The residents charged that the district has been compromised by the pension fund body in the expropriation of their property and wondered how the fund’s private business becomes a public interest affair warranting their eviction. The mayor emphasized to her enraged audience that the Master Plan had cost government a lot of money and it has to be implemented. Some residents said they are not going to be expropriated by NSSR because it has never issued them land titles in the first place. They challenged their leader to justify if their rights to property as enshrined in the constitution were not being threatened by what they termed as an unfair evaluation of their property. Others said that they were being evicted for the second time in a period of less than five years and threatened never to build houses anymore if evicted this time round.“I shall not construct a house anymore. I will just rent...it is better,” one resident charged. Ends