After their swearing-in, 80 members of parliament including those serving for the first time have been undergoing induction for two weeks in functioning of Parliament, Government programs and how parliament holds the executive accountable.
On their first day, the Members of Parliament will kick off the third trimester of the parliament where they will decide on its programme. This trimester is the official start of the fourth term of the parliament to end in 2023.
Dr. Frank Habineza who will serve in parliament for the first time told IGIHE that during the induction they were introduced to several mechanisms of how parliament works and are now ready to serve the nation.
“I can say that we have now understood the parliament operations at the 50% level but we have to learn more. We will get accustomed by and by,” he said.
The members of parliament were oriented by the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General, Johnston Busingye, the Minister for Local Governance, Francis Kaboneka, different staff from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning and other members of parliament.
Most of the activities of the Chamber of Deputies are carried out through nine committees. The elections for the chairpersons of those committees are slated to be held on October 9, 2018.
The most known committee of the Rwanda’s parliament is the Public Audit Committee (PAC) which was headed by Juvenal Nkusi who has now gone into retirement.
PAC usually makes news headlines for hearing and seeking accountability from government officials on the use of the public funds.
Other parliamentary committees include the Committee on Political Affairs and Gender; Committee on Economy and Trade, Committee on Education, Technology, Culture and Youth, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Cooperation and Security, the Committee on Social Affairs.
Others are Committee on National Unity, Committee on Human Rights and Fight against Genocide, the Committee on Budget and National Patrimony and the Committee on Agriculture, Livestock development and Environment.
On October 8, parliament will hold the plenary session which will discuss the conduct of local leaders and declaring their wealth.
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