Jean Baptiste Rucibigango, the PSR party President(middle) and other party officials during a press conference dedicated to the Labor Day – April 30,2019
As we celebrate Labor Day, the Rwandese Socialist Labor party- PSR is requesting the government to put in place a platform that would allow the general public to know the pension history instead of having to walk to an office to get such a vital information in the life of an employee.
Aware that Rwanda Social Security Board (RSSB) which manages pensions has many contributors, suggests that the government should make public the pension contributions to make them easily accessible to all contributors.
“Well, it might be hard to print copies of pension history for all, but using online or web platform can help one to know their status, and all Rwandans to know how much they contributed,” said Restituta Mukantagara, the Party Vice president in charge of women affairs.
Mukantagara also suggests that the social security procedures should be improved especially in declaring cases of accidents at work places while employers should be the first to take measures in such cases.
PSR commands the establishment of Ejo Heza savings scheme because it “will enable low income earners to access mortgage loans from just half of their long term savings.”
Under the scheme, in one year, Rwanda targets 207,500 citizens with an estimated saving of Rwf14. 5 billion and two million members with Rwf195 billion savings in five years.
On job creation PSR recognized that government has managed to create 200,000 new jobs annually since 2000, resulting to a private sector growth of 8%- the same as seen in India in 2019.
This growth, PSR officials, said, has enabled Rwandans access health services at 90% and thus a 18- year increase of life expectancy to 68 years according to the 2018 national statistics.
In the PSR job creation proposal statement, the comrades asked government to “Strive for work atmosphere, benefiting and value adding jobs”
“We want more jobs availed for the youth. For example, our students in vacations can be sent to the East African community to learn from others. They can even go as far as South Sudan and Zambia,” said Jean-Baptiste Rucibigango, the PSR party President.
The PSR proposal comes at a time when government in the 2019/2020 budget plans to increase the number of new jobs created annually from the initial target of 200,000 jobs to 213, 198 jobs annually.
However PSR members urged government to ease access to loans and create many off-farm jobs.
“The starting point should be to provide youth with marketable skills and knowledge that can allow them to create job opportunities in all sectors.
This should enable them to start small enterprises but with knowledge to grow bigger,” said Mukantagara.
Virgil Nsengumuremyi the PSR official in charge of Poverty Eradication said that there is discrepancy in funding and innovation which makes it hard for youth to create jobs.
“We need to reduce and shift youth mindset from thinking that learning sciences is the only source of employment, yet continue to remain unemployed at the expense of technical skills that can create immediate jobs,” Nsengumuremyi said.
