BUJUMBURA November 30th (ABP) – The Cabinet met at the Ntare Rushatsi State House on Wednesday November 27, 2019 under the chairmanship of 1st Deputy President Gaston Sindimwo with nine items on the agenda, including the report of the commission which worked on the project of servicing the Kinyinya-Ruhogo site, according to a statement issued by the General Secretariat of the government.
The statement said that on July 3, 2019, the Cabinet analyzed a note on the Kinyinya-Ruhogo servicing project. This site has the particularity of being located in a place that can easily be flooded. According to the same statement, this note was produced to inform the Cabinet on that file and indicated the advantages and disadvantages of stopping or continuing the project.
At the end of the discussions, the Cabinet noted that it needed to be further deepened at the technical level and set up a team with the missions to further deepen the file and draw the necessary conclusions, evaluate the means that were spent in the implementation of the project that was poorly executed and evaluate the cost of the works that will be done.
The statement goes on to say that as of October 16, 2019, the Cabinet took note of the findings of the commission’s report. Following the analysis of that report, the Cabinet appointed a team to address all the issues raised in that report and to propose a final answer to each question, to establish the responsibilities of each and to determine the fate of buyers of the parcels. The Cabinet meeting of November 27, 2019 analyzed the replies proposed by the Commission to the questions raised.
The Commission was proposing the definitive cessation of works on the servicing of the Kinyinya-Ruhogo site with accompanying measures. These measures include compensation to landowners for parcels not affected by the servicing works, reimbursement to bona fide purchasers of the servicing fees already paid, and restitution to the State of all servicing costs paid by the buyers to the association of landowners of Kinyinya-Ruhogo “APPKR”, reimbursement to the APPKR association of the amount corresponding to the servicing works already carried out on the ground estimated at 3,593,287,974 Burundi francs by the Technical Commission.
In return, the Kinyinya-Ruhogo site with an area of 194 hectares will return to the private heritage of the State. The statement indicates that in terms of establishing the responsibilities of each other in this matter, the Commission proposed to the Ministry of Justice to instruct the Public Prosecutor to take up the case.
Following the analysis of the Commission’s proposals, the Cabinet approved them with a recommendation to refine them in their wording to avoid confusion in their interpretation.
