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Rwanda: Campaigners Demand Competitive Bidding for Top Government Jobs
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Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
25 July 2008
Posted to the web 25 July 2008
Kigali
Senior administrative government positions need to put to competitive bidding such that competence is the driver for selection not political considerations, campaign group Transparency Rwanda says.
In the spotlight are posts of the Secretary Generals of Ministries and all Executive Secretaries of local government entities such as Provinces, Districts, and Sectors - all below to the lowest administrative hierarchy.
In a report released Friday, the local chapter of Transparency International says that these units are not subject to competition test as stipulated in the Presidential Order of August 2004 relating to recruitment of civil servants.
The researchers say the positions of Secretary General - who are top civil servants in ministries, and Executive Secretaries - who are essentially the permanent and technical employees of the local units, are all 'administrative and not political' like ministers.
However, the Secretary General in the Ministry of Local Government Mr. Eugene Barikana - under whose portfolio falls the executive secretaries told RNA that the report's findings are 'baseless'.
"Executive Secretaries of Districts and Sectors are employees of those units and all have gone through tests to be selected", said Mr. Barikana. "It is not true that they were simply appointed".
As for the Secretary Generals - like himself - and Executive Secretaries of Provinces, according to Mr. Barikana, they are appointed by government "and there is nothing wrong with that".
The units were established in 2004 as part of the reform of the country's administrative structures where provinces were merged from 12 to just 5. The districts were also introduced numbering 30. The Sectors are more because the same districts are again broken up into smaller units.
The Provinces are governed by appointed Governors but the districts are managed by elected mayors with supervision of an elected district council. The same happens with the sectors up down the smallest units.
The 112-page report: 'National Integrity Systems Study' being discussed at a stakeholders' forum in Kigali assesses compliance of different state institutions to transparency in their performance.
Transparency Rwanda says there is political will to fight corruption and promote good governance, but it should be strengthened. It also says the campaign against graft is 'globally satisfactory, but should be completed and refined'.
"Many public institutions - even the civil society and private sector - do not have codes of conduct for personnel and manuals of procedure, while it is a minimum required by article 4 of the law no 23/2003 of the 7th August 2003 relating to prevention and repression of corruption and similar offences" the body notes.
In the 2007 report of Transparency International, Rwanda does not seem to be making sufficient progress in putting up mechanisms that control graft. The office of the Ombudsman has often dismissed the reports as not representative of the actual developments on the ground.
Transparency Rwanda says though there exist institutions that are supposed to curb graft, there is non application of disciplinary sanctions.
Parliament has been up in arms as to why recommendations from the Auditor General for sanctions on officials that misuse tax payers' money are not put into act.
The campaign group also wants the law instituting the Auditor General to be "approved and promulgated as soon as possible".
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As for political parties, Transparency Rwanda says there is a lot to be desired. "The weakness of material and financial capacity and lack of originality in their ideologies limit the influence of political formations" notes the study.
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