By James Munyaneza
The New Times

Following recent revelations of gross irregularities in the Fund of Genocide Survivors (FARG), the government has decided to commission a thorough financial audit into the Fund’s financial management, the Finance and Economic Planning Minister, has said.

James Musoni told The New Times in an exclusive interview recently, that he has already agreed with his local government counterpart, Protais Musoni, to engage experts from the National Institute of Statistics (NIS) to carry out the task.

“I have contacted him (Musoni) and together, we have decided to commission the audit immediately,” the finance minister said last week.

He said that the government was troubled that some people had abused the Fund’s finances, which has affected efforts to improve the livelihood of the most needy genocide survivors.

“There were some abuses such as cases where people were given money to construct houses for vulnerable families of genocide survivors, and just ate the money; they have to return that money; whoever is found to be responsible will refund it,” said Musoni. “Some of those people are still with us; they in the country,” Musoni added.

Over 45 construction firms are embroiled in a longstanding dispute with the government, over an aborted shelter programme and the case is now in the courts of law. MP Adrian Rangira, one of the people linked to the said construction companies, told the Chamber of Deputies last week that the government was to blame for the scandal “because it haphazardly halted the construction work.”

However, the finance minister said: “Some of them didn’t do the work at all, while others just put up shoddy structures. I think it was the right of government to stop people from constructing substandard houses.”

The two Ministers’ meeting came as a swift response to the damning revelations of massive abuse in FARG, unearthed by a parliamentary select committee, which released a report following a three-month inquiry into the Fund. The Report indicated that at least 22,000 families of impoverished genocide survivors were homeless, while thousands of their children had dropped out of schools.

Asked whether the government was considering increasing the budgetary allocation to FARG, the Minister said: “Increasing or decreasing the allocation is not the problem; let’s first find out how the money we gave them was used; those who benefited from it; the criteria used to determine beneficiaries and then we can make a decision of that (increasing the budget) based on audit findings.”

Set up by the government in 1998, FARG is the officially recognised channel for any financial and material support to the most vulnerable genocide survivors and 5% of the country’s total internal revenue collections are injected into the Fund each year.

Musoni said that overall, the government has injected about Frw40 billion into FARG since its inception and that the allocation was increasing with the increment in the internal revenues annually.

This year alone, FARG will get about Frw9 billion as the country’s internal revenue projections stand at around Frw180 billion.

Giving an example of the education sector, Musoni said the number of student beneficiaries should be able to reduce.

“For instance, some of the students who were being paid for by FARG several years should be graduating or some have already graduated.”

The Fund mainly provides survivors with shelter, education and health support.

Commenting on the difficulties faced by FARG workers in collecting the Frw10,000 mandatory monthly contribution to the Fund from corporate companies, the Minister said: “Perhaps we can look into the possibility of using Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) to collect this money as well.” He added that penalties can be put in place to discourage late remittances or evasions.

Musoni also said that the government was currently working on a document of policy and guidelines to detail the various aspects of urgent support vulnerable survivors needed.

“You can say you are going to build a house for someone (survivor) but will that person eat that house if he or she has no food. In the document, they are also talking about giving such people not only shelter, but also accompaniments,” he added.

Meanwhile, in a related development the Executive Secretary of FARG, Jean Marie Vianney Karekezi, said recently that the institution was finding it hard to recover debts from corporate companies, especially due to limited personnel.