Focus Media (Kigali)
Sam Ruburica
6 April 2008
Given that public relations has never been regulated and that the sector is currently populated by people with a variety of often irrelevant qualifications, professionalization was long overdue. The recently launched Public Relations Association of Rwanda (PRAR) aims at just that.
"I urge the association members' act as agents of change in order to shape the PR profession," Alfred Ndahiro.
The association constitutes a private-public partnership, PRAR president Peter Malinga said, since membership is open to PR officers from both sectors. Its main aim, he added, is to professionalize the public relations profession, given that its practitioners are often considered to be poor cousins of advertisers' and event management.
"They are taken for granted, they often report to lower levels in an organization such as the human resource or the finance managers, instead of having its own department," Malinga said, remarking that institutions that have departmentalized the public relations have reaped big benefits from it.
However, a lot of effort is required to improve the current state of the profession, especially in establishing a code of ethics.
"Currently, there is free entry to the profession as PR's are often considered as failed or re-traded journalists," Peter Malinga explained. "Moreover, the perception of the PR job is having a nice face and being able to string two to three sentences in English."
Therefore, the association has worked out strategies to promote professional public relations. "We are planning to restrict access, so as to weed out unqualified people," the PRAR president said.
In addition, a skills development program will be elaborated with the help of the Human Resources and Institutional Capacity Development Agency (HIDA), and quarterly public relations forums will be held.
The association will also organize PR lectures and benchmark tours to enable their members to learn from experiences abroad. Finally, a training program will be set up for PR practitioners.
To further encourage increased professionalization in the sector, the best practices will be recognized during the PR Awards event. And the association is also thinking regionally, hoping to host the forum of the East African PR Association (EAPRA), which will attract more than 400 participants.
Good and bad PR
During the launch of the association, the guest of honor and in charge of PR at the President's office, Alfred Ndahiro, reminded the participants that PR is one of the oldest professions, being already practiced by the Anglo-Saxons back in the 15th century.
According to him, the association's duties of the association are to develop and publicize the best practices in both private and public institutions.
However, he stressed the need to clearly distinguish between good and PR practices; whereas the first consist of good planning, proper handling of clients and working hand in hand with the media as well as being equipped to manage information, bad PR is characterized by chaos, lack of information and poor media relations.
He added that the impact of PR built up over time is essential for the development of the institutions as well as of the profession itself.
"I urge the association members' act as agents of change in order to shape the PR profession," Alfred Ndahiro said.
Andrew Mwenda, chief editor of Independent magazine in Uganda and guest speaker at the PRAR launch, said that PR should be a deliberate and sustained effort to improve the relations between an institution and the public.
He explained that a good PR officer is characterized by perseverance, persistence, endurance and a good balance. He further stressed the need for practitioners to develop a good relationship with the media. "It is in the institutions interest if it is criticized, since this helps in the correction of different mistakes."
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