Minister outlines village plan for 80,000 people

Meanwhile, relief agencies have said they are unclear about a claim by External Affairs and Cooperation Minister Severin Ntahomvukye that 100,000 people had returned to their homes from the government’s controversial regroupment camps in the last two months. Ntahomvukye said on Monday the operation to shut down the camps “should be finished in two months from now, if security conditions permit,” Agence France Press (AFP) reported. The only figures that could be confirmed, and those as of early April, were that 18,000 people had returned to their own villages in Bujumbura Rural and around 36,000 in Makamba, humanitarian sources told IRIN. Ntahomvukye also said that 80,000 residents in five camps in Bujumbura Rural, “who wanted to stay on there”, would be facilitated when the camps were transformed into permanent villages. “Ten years from now, Bujumbura will have expanded to reach the limits of the city. The government thought it would give the population the chance to set up villages on the same sites, with roads and water systems,” he said. The first site to be transformed would be Ruziba, where 500 houses are to be built, the minister added.

The European Commission delegate in Burundi, Geoffrey Rudd, said on Friday the EC was considering its position in relation to regroupment and the government’s new villagisation policy, but was not in favour of forced villagisation. The EC would be seeking to discuss the policy with the government, and had been calling for some months for a government-donor coordinating committee in which to discuss just such emerging issues, Rudd told IRIN. There would also have to be discussion with the villagers themselves to make sure they were in agreement with the policy and that it fulfilled a real economic need, he said. “Commission resources would not be available to the government for villagisation without prior dialogue with the villagers concerned,” he added.