A newly released report of revised categories of Ubudehe (classification of Rwandans based on economic status) indicates that almost 1,500,000 Rwandans are classified in the first category while the majority of Rwandans are in the third category.

Ubudehe categories are put into consideration as the budgets in different government institutions are being drafted. These categories, however, have been contested by some citizens saying some names given to different categories do stigmatize poor Rwandans by tagging them with ‘Abahanya’ and ‘Abatindi’; which have since been replaced by numbers.

New Ubudehe categories emerge in the new report presented to the cabinet meeting on Wednesday April 27th, 2016 that convened in Village Urugwiro presided over by President Paul Kagame.

Categories

This report of revised Ubudehe categories indicates that the majority of Rwandans are in the 3rd category.

A total of 376,192 households comprised of 1,480,167 people are in the first category. This represents 16% of all Rwandans.

The second category includes 703,461 households comprised of 3,077,816 representing 29.8% of all Rwandans.

The third Ubudehe category has 1,267,171 households comprising 5,766,506 citizens representing 53.7% of Rwandans while the 4th category has 11,664 household with 58,069 citizens representing 0.5% of Rwanda’s population.

Statistics indicate that 57.6% of people living in good conditions are Kigali city dwellers.

Revised Ubudehe categories will go into force in the 2016/2017 financial year expected to start on 1st July 2016. The statistics will be used in budgetary planning identifying stakeholders of government programs reserved for the support of vulnerable citizens like VUP, and medical insurance payments among others.

The first category include people without houses, hardly earning, and those affected by food insecurity.

The second category include people living on hard labor, masons, people paid for completed temporally jobs and those capable of renting houses or have their own houses among others.

The 3rd category includes citizens who don’t need government’s support, depend on their incomes; farmers who sell excess produce, and private investors with healthy businesses.

The 4th category include leaders from directors in public institutions up to the President of the Republic.

Worrying numbers

In an interview with IGIHE, the Minister of State in the Ministry of Local Government in charge of social welfare, Dr. Alvera Mukabaramba said that at the beginning, they expected a little number of citizens from the first and second categories but were surprised.

“When we observed criteria of classification, we thought we would find a little number of vulnerable citizens. However it was not the case since we double checked statistics.,” she said.

Working hard expected to reduce poverty

The government and Rwandans are required to work hard to reduce the number of poor citizens so as to reach the envisaged target of 2020 vision where the country targets 0% of people living below the international poverty-line.

“There are areas we need to concentrate efforts as the government and Rwandans have to work hard to attain the targeted goals while people receiving direct support should make a good use of it to graduate into self reliance,” said Alvera.