Street cleaners of Kigali have decried meagre pay, which they say is not enough to cope with increasing cost of living.

For instance, Wabareja Mukabalisa reports every day at her work station at 6am ready for work. After working for six straight hours with breaks for two hours only to come back at 2pm to keep the city clean.

At the end of the day, the 48-year-old mother of four, who has been on the job for around five years takes home Rwf800.

“It’s indeed a little pay compared with the cost of living which is skyrocketing in this city. Our earing remains far meeting the cost of living, as for instance, a 25-kilogramme of maize flour that was costing Rwf8, 000 has jumped to Rwf12, 000, in just three months and keep growing,” Ms Mukabarisa, a street worker in Nyagatare district, who works under the Sinaïus Cleaning Service Company told Rwanda Today.

She told Rwanda Today that given the working timetable, which requires them to report at work five days a week, it is almost impossible to have another source of income to make ends meet.

“Life is rapidly getting expensive, for instance, you could buy a small house at Rwf500, 000 three years ago but nowadays, only the plot is costing up to Rwf4 million, and that increase does not reflect on how much of the city dwellers here earn. Making Rwf800 a day is not sufficient to pay children's school fees, rent and food ,” Valentine Nikuze, 35, a city cleaner in Nyagatare city told Rwanda Today.

A mother of four, who has been working as a street cleaner for 14 months, and earning Rwf25, 000 per month told Rwanda Today that she can’t venture into a side hustle as her eight-hour daily pay can’t even sustain her meals for her family throughout the entire moth after the salaries cut.

“I contribute Rwf8, 000 in saving group because that salary can’t even sustain my entire feeding budget for my family. We used to work with another contractor and we were paid Rwf30, 000 a month, the contractor had promised us an increment on salary once he got the contract extension but he never got the extension. However, the successor we have been working with for one year down the road cut our salary by Rwf5,000,” Nikuze added.

“Back then, it was a bit easier to join the saving groups that could enable us to do other side jobs, as the cost of living was fairly bearable and the fact that the payment was a bit higher, but now we barely can,” she added.