Kigali, 31st December, 2015-During the end of year meeting held on 31st December 2015, MININFRA Management and Staff appraised notable achievements in 2015 and pledged to do more in terms of infrastructure enhancement countrywide in the New Year of 2016.

The meeting was chaired by the Minister of Infrastructure Honorable James MUSONI and attended by all MININRA Staff.

Christian RWAKUNDA, the Permanent Secretary welcomed new staff members and expressed gratitude to all staff for their significant efforts that enabled the Ministry of Infrastructure to achieve more in 2016.

He highlighted as well the key achievements of the Ministry in the year 2015 in four sectors:

 Energy Sector

The national electricity grid has been extended with the construction of 473 km of MV lines and 1151 km LV lines against the targets of 318.93 km of MV lines and 517.61 km of MV lines. Equally 40.5 MW of power generation were added to the country’s power generation.

Within the energy sector, the Ministry also appraises the successful completion of EWSA reform process.

Transport sector

In 2015 around 65 km of national unpaved roads were upgraded to paved roads and 137.6 km of national paved roads were rehabilitated, 95 % of national roads are now well maintained.

ONATRACOM was restructured and it changed to Rwanda Public Transport Company Ltd (RPTC) to enhance more attractive transport services especially in rural areas.

In streamlining air transport in the country Rwanda established the Aviation Transport Logistics Company (ATL).

RwandAir, signed an agreement with Airbus for an A330-200 and a larger A330-300. With this order, RwandAir became a new Airbus customer and is the first East African customer for the long-haul airliner. Aircraft deliveries will begin in the second half of 2016, enabling the country’s carrier to deploy its new flagship aircraft on medium and long-haul routes serving destinations in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Kamembe Airport flights were resumed in June 2015 after the completion of rehabilitation works.

Water and sanitation sector

The Ministry has put many efforts to provide clean and sufficient water to the population.

466, 771m3/volume of water per day in both urban and rural areas was produced from different water treatment plants.

Two Compact Water Treatment Plants were supplied in Muhanga and Nyagatare and in partnership with different development partners 432, 805 more people were provided clean drinking water.

Urbanization sector

The National Housing Policy and National Urbanization Policy were formulated and adopted by the Cabinet Meeting. The Rwanda building code, Rwanda urban planning code and six implementing orders of the law governing urban planning and building in Rwanda were adopted. Equally during 2015, thirty two (32) new IDPs were established with other two currently being upgraded.

In 2015, the Ministry of Infrastructure initiated awareness campaigns on the National housing and urbanization policies throughout the country.

Rwanda is now ready to host CHAN 2016 which is scheduled to start on 16th January 2016; all stadiums have been renovated including: Stade Amahoro, Stade Regional, Stade Huye and Umuganda Stadium (Rubavu).

Though the Ministry attained remarkable achievements, the management and staff pledged to deal with the challenges faced in 2015 to make sure that all the programs are fully implemented in 2016 as planned. The staff had the opportunity to exchange on the way forward.

To achieve more in 2016, the Minister of infrastructure Hon. James MUSONI vowed to enhance staff capacity on either national or international levels by collaborating with higher learning institutions in the country or abroad to provide special courses.

He said: “Capacity building is paramount in an institution good performance, we have to leave out archaic methods of capacity building and initiate targeted ways of building our staff capacity.”

The closure of the meeting was marked by “ubusabane” to wish each other a Happy New Year.