Relocated From Slum To Modern Home –How Govt Should Treat Its Citizens

How many times has flood overran  neigbourhoods in Nigeria slum or not, without the government, whether state of federal giving a hoot?

In fact, how many roads, especially inner city roads have become gullies, partially or fully cut into two or more sections without government anywhere caring?

Public infrastructure that do not work are a common sight in our country, despite billions of naira yearly budgeted to take care of these infrastructure.

It is truly a shame that a Nigeria of this millennium cannot boast of basic things that smaller and less endowed countries have long taken for granted.

That happens because the people holding the reins of power on our behalf simply do not care, and the electorate themselves highly docile, never ready to ask questions.

The slum

The new estates

It is different in many countries, the case below a typical example.

It is about the government in Rwanda, delivering on its mandate of relocating residents of Kigali’s largest slum known as “Bannyahe”, located in Gasabo District to a purpose-built estate, new Busanza estate in Kicukiro District, one of the three Districts which constitute the City of Kigali and is situated in Kigali’s South-East.

A report in The New Times indicates that the tenants are also facilitated to move their belongings to their new places of residence.

More instructive is that the government is eager to fully move them ahead of the heavy rains. Once the rain falls, the whole place becomes something else.

What is more, the tenants are given sustenance money in appreciation of their special dilemma.

An official, while giving credence to this, added that amount which each resident is given varies, but the authorities are working with a deadline of fully evacuating 1,300 families living in the slum dwelling covering three villages of Kangondo 1, Kangondo 2 and Kibiraro by Sunday, September 18.

Landlords in the areas being evacuated have already been given new housing units in the estate in Busanza, Kicukiro District.

“We are providing one-month rent to tenants who are relocating from this area,” Solange Muhirwa, the Chief of Urban Planning for Kigali City, told The New Times.

“The amount varies according to the type of house and neighbourhood – you know we don’t have harmonized rent prices in Kigali. Some say they need Rwf20,000 for one month, others Rwf25,000 or Rwf30,000 and that’s what we give them.”

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The number of the tenants who will benefit from the social support is not yet clear, Muhirwa said, but she assured that every tenant from the slum who needs support would get it.