The Ministry of Public Service and Labour will, in July, adopt Electronic Recruitment (e-Recruitment) system to close the existing gaps in recruitment, appointment and nomination of public servants.

This was revealed, yesterday, by the minister, Judith Uwizeye, while appearing before the parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Affairs.

Uwizeye said the new system would help prevent anomalies in the recruitment process and unlawful dismissal of public servants, among other issues.

"All applicants will be requested to deposit their documents and qualifications in a single database,” said Uwizeye.

"Managers of various public institutions will be able to allocate suitable applicants for consideration in the time of recruitment,” she said.

In a recent cabinet meeting, ministers adopted the Presidential Order governing modalities for recruitment, appointment and nomination of public servants.

Uwizeye said many public institutions were given the green light to independently hire staff instead of asking for employees from the Ministry of Labour and Public Service. 

The institutions include Office of the Auditor-General, Rwanda Development Board, Ministry of Education, University of Rwanda (UR), the Ministry of Health, among others.

Uwizeye added that University of Rwanda’s board was given a special statute legalising new autonomous modalities to hire staff, researchers and administrators.

"This was aimed at empowering the public institution’s Board with autonomous powers of recruitment, appointment and nomination of lecturers, support staff and administrators depending on what they feel would suit the objectives of the institution,” she said.

Unlawful dismissal

Legislators told the minister that they had received various petitions from former public servants who claim to have been unfairly dismissed.

"There are still a few existing errors in the way people are dismissed from their jobs. Some human resource managers do not follow the legal frameworks to terminate people. We have received several complaints in the past, some of which are genuine. These errors have to be rectified,” said Marie Rose Mureshyankwano, chairperson of the committee.

Minister Uwizeye did not rule out claims of dismissal errors, saying unlawful dismissal from work was largely reported during the recent restructuring process in public service.

"This issue is a burden to the ministry and all stakeholders, but I want to assure you that we are doing our best to inform concerned authorities on how to dismiss people from work,” she said.

The minister acknowledged that such unfair acts are mostly influenced by personal interests, whereby, "some people simply do not fire people because they have failed to deliver on their tasks but just because they have other reasons, not ignoring the fact that they want to hire their own people or something of that kind. That is something we are trying to fight.”

Uwizeye said directives had been issued to put in place special committees to evaluate employees’ performance, and advise the management, hence reducing unlawful dismissal of public servants.

A recent research by the Ministry of Public Service and Labour indicates that about 7 per cent of public servants who quit their jobs were subjected to unlawful dismissal.

Figures indicate that there are about 94,000 public servants in the country.

The Deputy Vice-Chancellor in charge of Academic Affairs and Research at the University of Rwanda, Prof. Nelson Ijumba, told The New Times that the new mechanism is great step of freedom from bureaucracy in hiring staff, which would be translated into effective service delivery.

"The concept as to which we sought autonomous powers in recruitment process was to have freedom to choose the rightful candidates for the job available and in the right time… through the new modalities, we won’t be constrained by ministerial structures and bureaucracy that existed while recruiting an employee, a lecturer or anybody we needed. This makes life easier,” Ijumba said.

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