Dr Habineza Frank, the President of the Democratic Green party, urges the National bank to publish new bank notes having French scriptures showing the monetary value of the bank notes, especially the ones worthy 500 Rwf.
He deplored the fact that English and Kinyarwanda are the only languages written in the bank notes while the national constitution stipulates that all three languages, namely Kinyarwanda, French and English should be used in the official papers the same way.
Dr Habineza said this during a live show that took place this Sunday, at different radio stations such as Isango, Ishingiro, Inkuramutima, Izuba and Isangano.
In the same show were invited Lawyer Nizeyimana Boniface, Journalist Liliane Uwineza from Flash FM, and Mukobwajana Florence, the finance Manager in the Green party .
The core issue was to assess why French scriptures are not shown in different official documents such as IDs, some of the Bank notes of five hundreds francs, among others.
Dr Habineza told Isango that after finding out the case, they wrote a letter to the Governor of the National Bank informing him the case. Meanwhile we are still waiting for an adequate answer, Dr Habineza said.
Asked about what will be done if the Green party does not receive a convenient answer from the National Bank , Dr Habineza responded that the party will bring the case to the constitution court, meaning the Supreme court to take the position about it.
Lawyer Nizeyimana said that in Rwanda, there are three languages that are constitutionally accepted, especially the Kinyarwanda language that is a national language while others are official languages, he said.
He deplored that in other public services, all three languages are not equally used, what should be avoided.
Florence Mukobwajana expressed her concerns about the fact that French will eventually disappear if the officials do not use it into the writing of the official documents the same way as it is for other documents.
Asked why the Green party does not advocate for an adequate use of Kinyarwanda, he said that the Kinyarwanda language has a committee of intellectuals ( Inteko y’ururimi n’umuco) that is in charge of all issues relating to Kinyarwanda language.
Concerning the role of journalists in in informing the public about the issue, Liliane Uwineza said that journalists brought the issue to common people through radio shows, adding that more efforts are will be provided to keep on advocating for a better change.
We at Flash FM, we debated the issue with listeners and some of them found the problem being based on the education system that often has changed thus impacting on the language instruction and acquisition, Liliane told Isango.
Some of them (listeners) advocated for a better use of Kinyarwanda in specific areas such hospitals, she added.
Listeners expressed their concerns about the fact that French is not used equally with English while many of mature Rwandans were educated in French.
Another topic discussed upon during the show was the Crimea crisis, a former Ukrainian territory recently annexed to Russia.
Dr Habineza said that this crisis is rooted into the self determination of Crimea people who wanted to become part of Russia.
European Union wants the whole Ukraine be part of EU, an political proposal that Russia cannot accept at all.
UM– USEKE.RW
