The government program of resettling people in the settlement villages especially from high risk zones, on cliffs, swamps and in valleys is meant to make people secure and providing them with development opportunities and necessary facilities.

The program that also intends to boost agriculture has helped in evacuation of more than 70percent of the residents in Gisagara district from High Risk Zones and settled in allocated villages in different sectors of the district.

Most of these residents say that it was difficult for them to comprehend the reasons why they had to evacuate their homes and even family houses to settle in villages and thought of it as ditching their culture but now they understand these reasons and that it was for their own good.

Petero Habimana and his wife Perusi Nyirakinani residents of Mukindo sector who were evacuated from High Risk Zones had difficulties abandoning the only home they had known long before the 1994 genocide against Tutsis but now they fully understand the advantages of joining others in the settlement villages.

“We are now happier and no longer lonely like before we evacuated which was difficult for us. We now get to learn what happens in the area and the country, we interact with other people and we are sure we are going to attain development and develop this village into a town.”

People living in settlement villages will not only attain development facilities but will be able to join land they evacuated in Land Use Consolidation Program and grow crops at a large scale. As Jean Pierre Musafiri the official in charge of land in the district explained, this will increase their crop production for consumption and sell and develop their social welfare.

People of Gisagara district are expecting a lot in development especially in social welfare and in agriculture from the two programs of settling people in villages and the Land Use Consolidation Program.