During interactions with residents wherever he goes, Kagame leads a face-to-face contact with Citizens and hits at Ministers and local leaders once they start mincing words when it’s time to respond to questions asked by Citizens. Once the leaders agree to their failures and promise to follow up on unsolved issues, the President goes on to even request residents to telephone him once they (leaders) don’t meet the agreed deadline to solve the problems. In addition to this style of solving the Country’s development challenges, Kagame initiated a policy of performance contracts commonly known as Imihigo. Imihigo, a traditional practice in the Rwandan culture, was re-initiated by President Kagame in March 2006. This was a result of the concern about the rate and quality of execution of government programmes and priorities. The government’s decentralization policy required a greater level of accountability at the local level. Kagame’s main objective of re-initiating imihigo was to make public agencies and institutions more effective and accountable in their implementation of national programmes and accelerate social-economic development agenda as contained in the vision 2020 and Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy policies as well as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In his Community Outreach trips, Kagame demands leaders to work more and achieve the Country’s development goals. In Nyabihu District, Kagame raised the issue of a milk plant that has been pending completion since 2011. After asking Agriculture Minister why the plant has been not completed, the President realized that negligence was behind the slow success. He told residents that: “As leaders, we take the blame for this issue and we are going to regret why this plant has not been completed. We are going to solve it in one way or another. But we also look forward to how you will make it productive and if you fail, the blame will be on you,” said Kagame. This is how Kagame bends his leaders towards citizens. Through these interactions, however, Kagame does not leave Citizens reluctant. He remind them to be the Centre stage of maintaining security and development of their Country.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 10:11:39 +0000
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