Rwanda National Police

Last month, the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs launched the National Risk Atlas of Rwanda, which focuses on five main hazards: drought, landslide, flood, earthquake and windstorms. It highlights the elements at risks, the nature of vulnerability and recommendations to mitigate the risks.

The highlands of the Congo-Nile Ridge in the Western, Southern and Northern Provinces are mostly prone to landslide. About 40 percent of the country’s population, according to the atlas, is also exposed to landslide at moderate to very high slope susceptibility.

Gakenke, Karongi, Muhanga, Ngororero, Nyamagabe Gicumbi, Nyamasheke,Nyaruguru, Rusizi and Rutsiro are the likely disaster-prone districts.

Landslides and floods identified as major hazards are attributed to hilly topography and high annual precipitation rates with overexploitation of the natural environment such as deforestation, inappropriate farming and poor housing techniques, which accelerate the disaster risks and hence result into losses of lives and damages to property.

This is aggravated by some triggering factors such as steep slopes, soil instability, heavy rains, low level of drainage system, land-use type, land tenure type and others.

Thus, the government has for years been involved in relocating families residing in these high risk zones, to identified safer places.

Despite the big step in the relocation of families residing in these risky areas, there are some families that are either still reluctant or have vehemently refused to heed the repeated life-saving calls to relocate to secure places, putting their lives at stake.

In 2011, floods destroyed around 354 houses in the Western Province and damaged about 3,000 hectares of farmland, according to reports by MIDIMAR.

Between December 2011 and September 2011, disasters produced a complex web of impacts, which spans various sectors of the economy including loss of about 43 lives, 73 people were injured.

Besides, 1854 houses were destroyed, 2, 989, 9 Ha of crops were damaged and eight school destroyed.

As a result, the cost of the intervention activities in terms of disaster response and recovery to assist the victims was estimated at about Rwf516 million (MIDIMAR reports, May -September 2011).

The rainy season is here; we cannot expect anything less if there are still families living in these dangerous demarcated zone.

Of late, there have been cases of people acting violently when stopped from building houses in these dangerous places, an act of irresponsibility, disobedience, putting lives of family members on the edge, and a crime itself.

The whole idea of demarcating such places is to ensure safety of communities, organize families in safer places for easy accessibility of public infrastructures like roads, electricity and clean water.

The public are also considered as the country’s wealth and loss of any life means loss of manpower and consequently wealth.

Rwanda National Police, therefore,  in its endeavors to preserve and security for all  appeals to those families that still live in the demarcated wetlands, hilly or other areas considered  high risk zones, abide by the country’s safety programmes, to voluntary   relocate to safe zones.