Seven years of Tshisekedi: budget up from $3bn to $18bn, 6 million more children in school

Facing accusations that constitutional reform is a smokescreen for failed governance, Jean-Claude Tshilumbayi took to Stanis Bujakera Tshiamala’s Live Space X on Friday evening to deliver a detailed account of what he calls the accomplishments of the current administration since 2019.

In the social domain, the first vice-president of the National Assembly highlighted free primary education, which he says brought 6 million children back into classrooms, and free childbirth care for 2.5 million Congolese women.

Regarding the civil service, he revealed that the UDPS inherited one million employees recruited without matriculation numbers or salaries during Shadary’s electoral campaign in 2018, along with 400,000 “new units” who had received nothing for years. “We paid them all,” he asserted.

The health record is equally striking: the country had 1,700 doctors earning $300 per month; today there are 7,800 doctors paid $2,400. Magistrates, who once earned $400, and police officers, who received only $80 monthly, have both seen their salaries increased.

On infrastructure, Tshilumbayi claimed the construction of world-class universities, seven major hospitals including the Mama Yemo hospital that had been abandoned since 1917, 1,500 schools, and several airports, as well as an extension of the road network from 3,000 to 9,000 kilometers in seven years.

As for the national budget, he said it rose from $3 billion to $18 billion over the same period, with foreign reserves that “simply exploded.”

“Saying that we talk about the constitution to hide a governance failure is a ridiculous debate,” he concluded, before posing what he considers the real question: “Through which path should our people express themselves?”