Former Rwandan refugee urges feds to waive transportation fees
Mwumvaneza Azarias used money from his food budget to pay off $7,000 loan
A former Rwandan refugee is urging the federal government to waive the transportation fee for all refugees, not just those from Syria.
"Refugees coming from Congo, from Rwanda, from Burundi, they have a lot of challenges, a lot of war," said Mwumvaneza Azarias, who came to Canada in 2007 as a single dad with a $7,000 transportation loan.
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Within the first month of arriving to Canada, he received a letter from the federal government telling him how much he owed.
"We have bad experiences from back home regarding our government, so once we come here and we see letters from the government just one month after arrival, it's really stressful and scary. I was really fearful," he said.
He said he was forced to use money allocated to his food budget to make his loan payment each month. He and his family went on social assistance and Azarius, a university-educated hydrologist, went back to school.
"It was really stressful," he said.
Within four years he paid off his transportation loan, got a job, went off social assistance and bought a house.
"I'm very, very happy that the federal government now accepted to waive the transportation loan for the government-assisted Syrian refugees," he said.
Now he wants the government to waive the fee for all government-assisted refugees.
"By waiving this amount of money so people will be really happy, they can afford to pay their rent in affordable houses, they can afford to buy balanced diet, they can afford to buy proper clothing and to reduce the stress," he said.
"They are going to contribute to the economy, to this country."