Faced with by poverty and famine, returnees living in Gisuru commune say that the promises of assistance upon their return were not honored. They ask the government to help them.
Ezéchiel Mpitabavuma: “The food assistance that we were given for three months lasted only two months”
Dozens of houses built with adobe bricks and covered with straws are visible in a village located in Gacokwe area at about 10 kilometers from the center of Gisuru commune in Ruyigi province, in the east of Burundi.
Naked children, the youth, Old women as well as men take everyone for a good Samaritan. Most of them are returnees from Nduta refugee camp in Tanzania. Some say they had fled hunger while others fled the political crisis in 2015.
All of them say they were abandoned after their return from Tanzania.
Espérance Niyokwizera, 33, had fled in 2012. As life in her native area was impossible, she says she left Burundi hoping to earn a better life.
“After hearing the call of the government delegation inviting us to come back home, we decided to return because life in the refugee camp was worse than in Burundi,” she says.
Having arrived in the country, she adds, the government asked us to build houses so that it can give us metal sheets to cover them.
“We used all the money we were given for the construction activities. It’s been months now that we have waited for these metal sheets in vain. The government should assist us with them and food, as the rain threatens us and we are starving,” she says.
Immaculée Nkurikiye, 38, lives in Ndemera area of the same commune. This widow of 3 children who fled the country in 2016 was repatriated in 2018.
She says she has used all the financial assistance she received to build a house in the hope of being among those who will be assisted with metal sheets.
“When it rains, I find refuge in the neighboring households. Life is completely impossible here. As I cannot do my pottery business, I have to beg in the center of Gisuru or in other localities to survive, “She sadly explains.
Ezéchiel Mpitabavuma, 26, says to have fled in 2016 following the threat by the youth affiliated to the ruling party CNDD-FDD. Since his return in 2018, he has been in total desolation.
“The food assistance that we were given for three months lasted only two months. We expect unsuccessfully metal sheets and other food assistance we were promised after our settlement in our places of origin.”
All these returnees call on humanitarian organizations and the government to help them by giving them metal sheets to cover their houses and food as promised on their return. “All that we were given is over now,” they say.
The communal administration pleads for the returnees
Aloys Ngenzirabona, Gisuru commune administrator, says there is no budget allocated to the assistance of returnees. For him, the communal administration only pleads for them so that local NGOs working in this commune can assist them.
“The Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry in charge of Social Affairs should assist these returnees; otherwise, the repatriation program could be a failure.”
According to the administrator, if returnees are not assisted, they risk going back to the refugee camps, what would be a failure of the repatriation program initiated by the government.
Contacted, the Director General in charge of repatriation in the Ministry of the Interior did not want to comment on the situation and sent us to the spokesman for the same ministry, who also did not want to give his reaction.
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