Impracticable roads due to flooding

Some areas from Bujumbura City Council are unsafe and unhealthy to live in because of flooded roads and streets during heavy rain. It prevents free movement of both cars and pedestrians. According to the Director of Town Planning, half of those places will soon be made salubrious.-By Lorraine Josiane Manishatse

An impracticable street because of flood.©Iwacu

People from rural Gihosha, Gikungu, Kibenga as well as Nyabagere are the luckiest because the fund to proceed to laying out and development work activities in those quarters is already available. There are also some areas where the situation is not good at all. We can enumerate Mugoboka in South Mutanga, Gikoto in Musaga, Gasenyi in Gihosha , rural Gasekebuye and Busoro in rural Kanyosha, Kuwinterekwa in Gihosha where the streets and roads’ practicability leaves to desire.

People are obliged to clean up their paths

“In community development works of every Saturday, we try to clean and evacuate dust and mud in the streets and gutters,” said Dieudonné Ntirandekura, one of the inhabitants of Kuwinterekwa area. At Carama, even young children try to remove sand in gutters along the road separating Carama – Gahahe side and Gatunguru. At Kamenge near the Northern parking station cars, on National Road N1, young people do the same work. Out of bad comes good. When removing sand in gutters, those children sell it and earn money. They sell it BIF 10 thousand a truck whereas others sell it from 35 to BIF 4O thousand a truck. “Today, we have already gained BIF 60 thousand,” says one of the young boys. “We are here since 6:00 am, the rainy water has penetrated into shops and rooms, and it has attained 3Ocm high,” he adds. Pierre Niyombari, who owns a small house of two rooms states that many houses are destroyed each year during the rainy season. “We are obliged to rebuild them every year,” he regrets. The Ministry in Charge of Environment has already finished the delimitation operation in urban area. “But, the population tries to expand their land in rural areas or in bushes. They want to own a plot in town at all cost,” indicates Floribert Girukwishaka, Director of Town Planning in the Ministry in Charge of Environment.
He concludes that the construction of houses in places that don’t comply with urban regulations is anarchic and illegal.