Law Reform Commission staff petition ministry over dismissal

Nine technical staff from the National Law Reform Commission have petitioned the Ministry of Public Service ans Labour, challenging their dismissal which they say is illegal.The legal experts say the institution chairperson, John Gara, illegally submitted them to a hard exam which they couldn’t pass, while they were legally employed after passing the exam set by the Public Service Commission.They said, the exam consisted of drafting a law and analysing another in three hours, “which is practically impossible.” At the start of the saga, according to the petition letter whose copy The New Times has seen, the nine staff were employed in May and July 2012, after passing an exam by the Public Service Commission.Following the demand of their work of drafting and analysing laws, they applied for an upgrade, which the Prime Minister’s order of March 2013 awarded them, taking them from grade four to grade three, while also increasing their salary.Failed exam“The increase of the salary was never executed, instead, the chairman said that the grade of the law experts changed, and so was the profile of the position, which pushed the chairman to say that they had to see if we measured up,” reads the document.The legal experts said they were asked to show the service delivered for an evaluation and they were subjected to a “special exam”, which also, they said, was not done according to the law.“We learnt about the exam on May 20, while we were to sit it the following day, yet the law states that one is given three working days to prepare for an exam,” reads the petition.All of them failed, according to the results that were released on June 5, thirteen days after sitting the exam.On Friday, May 7, the staff asked the Ministry of Public Service and labour to nullify the results of the exam, which they said was illegal.To defend themselves, they wrote that, “there is no law stating an exam for staff whose position was upgraded, their job profile did not change for them to be subjected to an exam, the exam was not aimed at assessing them, but only to sieve them out.”They requested for the appointment of an independent commission to look into their case and asked that, rules and regulations be applied.Alexis Ntagungira, in charge of service development and management at the ministry, who received the petition told this paper that the ministry would respond to their petition by today (Monday June 10). “We shall submit their case to the Public Service Commission to find out if they really faced injustice or not; rules will be applied in accordance with the law,” he said.Ntagungira added that, normally when a civil servant appeals, they get the final answer after three working days, but it may be more than that, depending on the exigencies of the case.The National Law Reform Commission was established by law, N°01/2010/OL of 09/6/2010.Gara, former CEO of Rwanda development Board, was appointed in June 2012 as first chairperson of the institution. Efforts to get a comment from Gara on his known mobile phone were futile by press time as it was off.