BUJUMBURA July 13th (ABP) – The governor of Bujumbura (western Burundi) has granted stockbreeders in Rubirizi and Tenga a two-month additional period to leave these localities and move their herds elsewhere.
This was announced by the administrator of Mutimbuzi commune, Mr. Siméon Butoyi, during a meeting he held last Thursday, in Rubirizi, for those stockbreeders. He informed them that they must make their arrangements until next September, a check by ABP revealed.
That sensitization meeting for pastoralists followed two others of its kind, Administrator Butoyi said.
He stressed that it should be understood that this place is no longer conducive to livestock, as long as residential constructions take on an important appearance. Moreover, the cohabitation between man and animal is impossible, he added. He urged stockbreeders to look for another suitable place for that activity. “There remain two months for the implementation of the national policy of raising animals in permanent stalls which begins with the month of October, and it is necessary to prepare accordingly”, Mr. Butoyi stressed.
The stockbreeders of that locality believe that two months are insufficient to prepare to move and ask for additional time for the implementation of that measure.
Still others ask that this issue be studied with lucidity, in compliance with the law because, they indicate, the stockbreeders are established in plots bought in rural areas to exercise an economic activity that contributes to socio-economic development of the country, and the livestock is done in permanent stalls.
Either way, the move is inevitable and the stockbreeders make an agreement, but they are calling for the move time to be extended. They plead for the administration to help them look for public land that would be fenced and declared a livestock area so that pastoralists are not each time forced to flee the advance of urban areas.
The Mutimbuzi communal administrator reassured them by telling them that at the same time they will be looking for properties, the administration will do the same. He revealed to them that there is land that the State had lent to private individuals and that the latter have appropriated it. The inventory of those properties is ongoing, he noted. According to Mr. Butoyi, those stockbreeders can sell the plots where they are installed because they have increased in value. They can thus clear the debts contracted and continue to invest in the same activity, he suggested to those stockbreeders before closing the meeting.