{The Ministry of Justice has revealed a plan to donate phones and bicycles to community mediators to facilitate their performance.}
This was confirmed by the Minister of Justice, Johnson Busingye at the beginning of this week during the discussion with parliamentary political commission on matters presented in the 2014/2015 report of the ombudsman’s office.
The report indicated that community mediators are faced with various challenges including inadequate facilitation and working places.
Reacting on the raised challenges, Busingye said that they are in the process of addressing the issues.
“We have promised to donate bicycles to community mediators. We are placing an order of bicycles for the first round. We hope to get funding in the next budget to buy bicycles for the second round at a cost of Rwf 2 billion. The other challenge we have resolved is communication obstacles. We have already bought phones which will be distributed to all community mediators across the country,” he said.
Busingye said that it was difficult to communicate with community mediators without communication tools. Else, the Ministry of justice is partnering with the Ministry of Local Government to seek how to find offices in which community mediators will be carrying their duties.
Rwanda has a total of 17,941 community mediators.
Since 2010, the government of Rwanda has been paying medical insurance contributions for four family members of every community mediator. Community mediators have been lauded for handling 80% of simple civil cases that would have been referred to courts of law since 2004.
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