Burera District is ranked last in management of government funds, with over Rwf5 billions meant for different projects having not been accounted for.

According to 2017 report by the auditor general of state finances, Burera district was found to have weaknesses related to expenditures, such as unsupported, wasteful, fraudulent or inflated expenditures.

Joseph Munyaneza, Burera District vice mayor in charge of economic development said the poor performance was caused by delays in completion of some big projects.

“There are four projects that were supposed to have started generating incomes in 2016, but up to now they haven’t been productive to the District. Projects like Burera cross border market, College of Trade Ltd, Burera beach resort hotel, and Burera Diary — all worth over Rwf3 billion,” he said.

“Those unproductive project contributed to poor ranking, but we are certain that once all these projects commence their activities, the district will generate more profits hence gaining better standards of management of government funds,” said Mr Munyaneza.

“I strongly believe that government funds could have been mismanaged because of failure to clearly follow up the functioning of these projects before delay, but we assure the public that we’re committed to work and improve what wasn’t going well that led to poor management,” he said.

A mini survey conducted by Rwanda Today at the Burera beach resort hotel in Burera District found that the building had started developing cracks since it’s been two years it was finished but not yet operational.

“We also witnessed the non-functioning robot machine that was purchased to work in the textile industry named Burera College of Trade Ltd worth over Rwf150 million,”said Mr Munyaneza.

Mr Munyaneza told Rwanda Today that failure to get an investor to invest in the hotel to start operations put it on hold for the period of two years without working.

“We have managed to get an investor who is ready to resume with operations of the hotel and in less than one month, it start operating,” said Mr Munyaneza.

There are some projects that are difficult to tell when the operational activities will commence, for instance the Burera College of trade limited,because we have failed to get the skilled personnel to operate the machines.

He added that the other challenge that indicated poor handling of government funds in the district was the failure to have documents indicating the expenditures on the Burera workshop (Agakiriro ka Burera).

The only problem that come out was the investor who contracted the construction of the workshop who failed to submit the cost spent on the project, but he has promised to submit them before the end of next month.

However, “we are working hard to resolve all the indicated weaknesses in the report of the Auditor General with our main focus on non-productive projects” he added.

Rwanda Today tried to reach out to the contracted investor of the Burera workshop for more information on the delays to submit the formal statement of all the costs that were incurred in the construction but failed.

He said on direct message that “we are still preparing all the expenditures to be able to tell the right information.”

In this year’s report, the government counts many losses in persistent cases of delayed and abandoned contracts on certain projects.

The auditor general’s report indicates that cases of delayed and abandoned contracts were still persisting in public entities and tripled that of previous report.

A total of 109 contracts worth over Rwf206 billion delayed or abandoned.