Government to establish national skills database

The government is working on a system that will combine both private sector and civil servants skills data under one system, making it easier for employers to balance skills with the jobs on the market, the Ministry of Labour and Public Service has said. Appearing before members of the parliamentary Commission on National Budget and Patrimony to contribute to the Budget Framework Paper, the Minister for Public Service and Labour, Judith Uwizeye, said that whereas every civil servant is registered on the country’s skills database, plans were underway to also include skilled employees in the private sector. “Every civil servant, regardless of their location is registered in the skills data base. For instance, if I am looking for people who studied law, I just log onto the system and all the names will come up, together with their education background and where they worked before plus their employment status today. This has made everything easier and we are planning to harmonise the same with the private sector so that the recruitment process is easier,” she said. Uwizeye said that the government has also established a competence framework customisation system where skills are analysed and allocated accordingly. To do this, she said that six modules of recruitment, exit and termination, organisational structure, payroll, leave and absence were harmonised with one called business intelligence. “We will be getting fast and updated information where for example you may want to know about how many civil servants are no longer employed by the government and why, where they were working before etc. All this is done by the recruitment, exit and termination modules,” she said. The MPs also wondered what was being done to facilitate fresh graduates to join the job market since there were fewer jobs as compared to the number of graduates and also the issue of lack of enough experience. To this, MIFOTRA Permanent Secretary Gaspard Musonera explained that one of the mandates of the National Employment Programme (NEP) was to fix such issues. “This is the essence of NEP. These graduates are encouraged to start their own projects which Business Development Fund (BDF) helps to fund with up to 75 percent,” he said. He also said that the government provides training in technical schools which it hopes can provide employment options to fresh graduates. MP Theobald Mporanyi meanwhile criticized the continuous losses cited by the Auditor General’s Office in government entities. “When you look at the Auditor General’s Report and go back to discussions that we have in commissions based on the institutions that we have talked to, there are no institutions that give you courage that they are making progress. In fact most of them are causing losses. There should be a strategy in place to make sure that these losses stop,” he said. The latest Auditor General’s report released earlier this month shows that unsupported expenditure during the 2015/16 fiscal year totaled to about Rwf7 billion. editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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Government to establish national skills database