English
Kinyarwanda
Rwanda National Police (RNP), on Friday reached out to students of Groupe Scoulaire St. Vincent Nyange I located in Nyange Sector, Musanze District and enlightened them on the philosophy of community oriented policing and their role in fighting crimes.
The police spokesperson for the Northern region, Chief Inspector of Police (CIP) Hamdun Twizeyimana, and the District Community Liaison Officer (DCLO) of Musanze, engaged about 1000 students in various safety and crime prevention disciplines.
The outreach programme focused on fighting and prevention of sexual, gender and domestic violence; common narcotic drugs in Rwanda and their I'll effects to users as well as fighting the scourge of drugs; as well as preventing unwanted and teenage pregnancies.
This comes at the time when Rwanda National Police and other institutions including the ministries of Health, Youth, Local Government, Gender and Family Promotion as well as local authorities are actively engaged in countryside awareness especially against illicit drugs and child pregnancies.
CIP Twizeyimana reminded the students that consuming or selling illicit drugs like cannabis, illicit gins and other locally made illicit substances with different brand names like muriture and ibikwangari amounts to a criminal offence.
He took them through some laws that penalise both users and traders or traffickers as stipulated between articles 593 to 598 of the Rwandan penal code.
"You are sent to school to get a brighter future; a future that also guarantees the country better leaders, but abusing drugs will shut your doors, drive you out of school, lure you into sexual malpractices that result into unwanted pregnancies and contracting sexually transmitted diseases," the spokesperson told the students.
He urged them to instead join the efforts by reporting drug dealers in their communities
He also appealed to those that could be abusing drugs to refrain from such acts or to open up so as to be helped and rehabilitated.
Rehabilitation and preventing new users are one of the strategies to kill the local market.
